Civil Eats

02 February 2018

As part of a Jane Goodall-inspired community action group, "Saving Pan" includes recipes from Michelle Obama, Michael Pollan, and world-famous chefs.

When Brooke Abbruzzese was in sixth grade, she had no idea what to expect when she wrote First Lady Michelle Obama to ask for her favorite vegetarian recipe—or if she’d even get a response. But a month later, she found in her mailbox a formal-looking envelope fastened with the official White House seal.

“I was like, ‘What the heck! Why is there something from the White House in our mailbox?’” recalled Abbruzzese, who is now 14 and a freshman at Grant Park High School in Portland.

Obama’s recipe—for White House Kitchen Garden Cucumber Soup—joins recipes from Michael Pollan, and chefs Thomas Keller and Ina Garten, and many other luminaries in Saving Pan, a new cookbook created by Abbruzzese and 13 other Portland teens. The cookbook benefits the work of the Jane Goodall Institute’s Tchimpounga Sanctuary in the Republic of the Congo.

“In sixth grade, I was really into the environment, and I wanted to help give back,” said Abbruzzese, who admits to an obsession with Goodall. She met a primatologist friend of her father’s who told her about Roots & Shoots, the Goodall Institute’s youth-led community action program. Abbruzzese was inspired to form a chapter in her own community, drawing mostly from her classmates at Portland’s Beverly Cleary School. After researching why chimpanzees are endangered, the girls decided to focus on raising awareness of the illegal bushmeat trade, which is one of the biggest threats to chimp populations in Africa.

“I got a group of people together and we brainstormed, and that’s kind of how the cookbook came about,” said Abbruzzese. Saving Pan is a collection of vegetarian recipes that Abbruzzese and her classmates created over the course of three years. The title refers to the genus name for chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) and bonobos (Pan paniscus), but also to that most important cooking tool (the cover photo is a blackberry cobbler cooked in a cast-iron pan).

And then there’s Peter Pan, the classic children’s book. As the group explains in their introduction, “Think of it this way: Peter Pan was an orphaned child, similar to the orphaned chimps in Africa. It’s our biggest hope that they can go on to thrive as well as he did.”

McKenzie, Charlotte, and Willa cook up Mark Bittman's frittata

The cookbook was published in December and has already sold 800 copies—not bad for a self-published cookbook that so far has only been sold in Portland. The students have been featured in local news reports, and their U.S. Representative, Earl Blumenauer, recognized their achievement during a congressional session in December. And Saving Pan has already raised $8,000 to protect chimpanzees in Africa.

And the great apes need as much help as they can get. At the end of the 19th century, chimpanzees numbered as many as 1 million. Today, because of deforestation and illegal hunting, they are endangered. They have already disappeared from four African countries and are nearing extinction in many others. In fact, according to the World Wildlife Federation there are fewer than 250,000 chimps left in the wild.

Each Roots & Shoots project is supposed to be rooted in the chapter’s community, so the students—knowing Portland is recognized for its culinary scene—decided to engage local chefs. (The cookbook eventually grew to include chefs from all over the country—and even Canada, France, and Spain.) They thought a vegetarian cookbook would be a great way to educate others about the bushmeat trade in Africa and its effects on remaining chimpanzee populations.

“Because we’re trying to stop the hunting of animals, we thought that promoting vegetarianism would be a really good way to do that,” Abbruzzese said. Putting a vegetarian cookbook together involved writing to food-world leaders like Michelle Obama as well as the chefs at nationally known veg-centric restaurants like Angelica’s Kitchen in New York City (which has since closed), Greens in San Francisco, and the Green Door in Ottawa. The students went door-to-door in Portland, asking celebrated local chefs including Jenn Louis, Kelly Myers, Sarah Pliner, and Jaco Smith for recipes. And the book also contains favorite recipes from the girls’ families: Aunt Debbie’s Artichoke Lasagna, Grandma Eastman’s Macaroni & Cheese, and the blackberry-blueberry cobbler shown on the cover.

A Jane Goodall collage, from Saving Pan.

Over the course of three years, the students gathered to test recipes on Friday nights. “The Friday I joined, they were doing the Michelle Obama recipe. So, I was like, ‘This is even cooler than I thought,’” said Emma Francioch, 14.

To avoid the chaos of too many cooks in the kitchen, half of them cooked, while the other half worked on the collages of the chefs that illustrate each recipe. They learned basic cooking skills from each other, through trial and error, and from the hosting parents. “They even had to clean up their own mess!” said Shanta Abbruzzese, Brooke’s mom.

“I was a little bit interested in cooking prior to doing this cookbook, but I didn’t have a lot of skills,” said Willa Gagnon, 15. “And now I feel like I can go into the kitchen and look at a recipe—or not—and I can make food that my whole family wants to eat.”

The girls had some surprise favorites, including lime-tofu wraps, Moroccan chickpea soup, “Soba Sensation,” and Michael Pollan’s “Any-Veggie Frittata.” Stokes, who usually doesn’t like coconut, was surprised by how yummy the roasted cauliflower in a creamy coconut fennel sauce was. (Chef Roy Farmer at the Green Door in Ottawa contributed the recipe.) “I need to make that again. I just love this recipe!” she said.

The cauliflower recipe was a touchstone for the students, teaching them that even when they think they don’t like an ingredient they should try it in a new iteration. “A lot of people in the group were like, ‘Noooo! I don’t want to eat it—I don’t like cauliflower!’” said Abbruzzese. “But then, everybody’s like: ‘You have to try it!’ And I don’t think there was a single person who wouldn’t eat it.”

Many of the girls became vegetarians on and off throughout the project; Abbruzzese became a vegetarian because of the cookbook—and remains one today. “I fly fish and she’s prohibited me from keeping what I catch. I have to throw it back,” says Brooke’s father, Chris Abbruzzese.

Working on a project that took three years to see through was tough. “There were definitely times where I was like, ‘Is this really gonna happen?’” said Stokes.

Ultimately the project taught them not only how to cook and work effectively in a large group but the value of persistence and dedication.

That said, they think their next project for the Grant Park Chapter of Roots & Shoots won’t be quite as ambitious. “We’re starting to get busier, and we’re starting to get, like, more homework,” said Stokes. “Before the book came out, we didn’t even know what finals week was!”

16 January 2018

Over a decade ago, while filmmaker Laura Dunn was making her first feature documentary, “The Unforeseen,” farmer and poet Wendell Berry graciously invited her into his Henry County, Kentucky home so she could record him reading the poem from which the movie’s title originates. Like many, Dunn was moved by Berry’s presence, and she’s been working to bring his worldview to a wider audience ever since.

Earlier this year, she released “Look and See,” an unconventional documentary about Berry’s life. In the film, Berry himself is elusive, never actually appearing on camera in the present day. Instead, the film is filled with still images of Berry on his farm in the early years, television footage from the 1970s of him opining about changes to agriculture, and his resonant voice floating over gorgeously shot images of Kentucky farmland.

Dunn knew early on that Berry would not agree to be filmed. But rather than abandon the project entirely, she took this as a creative challenge. As a result, “Look and See” offers a view of the world from Berry’s eyes instead. Over the course of the film, you meet Berry’s daughter, Mary; his wife, Tanya; and numerous Kentucky farmers whose struggle to stay on the land in the face of consolidation is the subject of much of Berry’s work.

The film also captures Berry’s debate with Earl Butz, the now famous U.S. secretary of agriculture under Nixon and Ford, and a major proponent of industrialization of agriculture. In his rebuttal, Berry pays homage to the “traditional farmer” who “first fed himself off his farm and then fed other people; who farmed with his family, and passed the land on to people who knew it and had the best reason to take care of it. That farmer stood at the convergence of traditional values. Our values. Independence, thrift, stewardship, private property, political liberty, family, marriage, parenthood, neighborhood. Values that declined as that farmer is replaced by technologies whose only standard is profit.”

“Look and See,” which has been screened in communities across the country through TUGG (a theatrical booking site for indie films), debuted on Netflix in October. Civil Eats spoke to Dunn about telling the story of Berry’s life, her unconventional filmmaking methods, and why she sees Berry’s novels as the heart of his oeuvre.

When did you first read Wendell Berry’s writing and what imprinted itself upon you?

I read The Unsettling of America in high school. My mom is a [corn] geneticist—and very much an environmentalist, an agricultural person. Because of that, I was interested in these ideas. And then I read more of his stuff in college; he was a writer I really loved. But when I was working on my first feature, “The Unforeseen,” [executive producer] Terrence Malik wanted me to find some voices to include in the film … So I delved deeply into his work—mostly his poetry. And then I reread The Unsettling. And I really fell in love with his poetry and his work again.

And why did you decide to make this film, so many years later?

When we toured “The Unforeseen,” I was really surprised by how few people knew who Wendell Berry was. I feel like more people should be familiar with Berry’s work.

Can you talk about what it was like to make a film about Berry without including him in it? And I take it that wasn’t your choice?

It was the constraint he put on me. He is really anti-screen: no computers, T.V., or movies. He thinks it contributes to the decline of literacy and the deterioration of imagination. And I knew that, so I knew this would be a challenge.

He didn’t want to be filmed—it makes him feel so inauthentic. So, in those early conversations, I said to him, “I understand. I actually think that’s very insightful information about you. If we could just do audio interviews, that would be interesting. I want you to point me to what we should see.” So I accepted that constraint. And it was his wife Tanya who would say, “This is who you should talk to.”

Can you say anything about the black-and-white still photos at the heart of the film?

James Baker Hall, one of Wendell’s dearest friends, passed away in 2009. He was a writer and professor at the University of Kentucky, and he took all these gorgeous black-and-white photos. His widow had boxes and boxes of never-before-seen negatives and when we found them, I thought, “There’s a film here that we could piece together.” It’s sort of impressionist-style.

Who are the farmers you interview throughout, and why do you choose not to name them in the course of the film?

Everyone in the film is a friend or a neighbor of Berry’s. Sometimes I watch the film and think, “Maybe I should have named them.” Form is something I’m constantly experimenting with. There are standard things you’re supposed to do in a documentary. I had it with their names for a long time. Then I thought, “It becomes so literal-minded.” I want people to feel something. We live in such an information age. I don’t want more data. I want something that’s going to transport me to a place. I’m making the film I want to see.

Can you speak about the beautiful wood engravings that start each chapter of the film?

Wesley Bates has illustrated a lot of Wendell’s books. [Co-director/producer] Jef Sewell, my husband, did the visual design. I wanted it to be chapters like in a book. So he said, “We have to find Wesley Bates.” He’s an amazing, vibrant artist in his 60s, who lives in Toronto. They’d have conversations over the phone and then he’d sketch something and then we’d give him feedback.

Throughout the film, we hear Berry reading his poems. How did you choose which poems to include?

It was really tough. “The Window Poem” was something I had read many years ago and that was really in mind when we started the film. It’s about the tension between the grit of our world and the patterns. My approach was to go to Henry County and do a portrait of this place. We’d go and I’d spend a few weeks, find what stories were compelling. We’d shoot all the footage and then you edit it and you find narratives—poems to frame things. This illustrates this idea, or that idea.

I was familiar with his essays and poetry, but I didn’t know that he also wrote novels. Can you say a little about them?

I honestly think his novels are the heart of his work. Basically, every single novel is told through the eyes of a different character in a small town in Kentucky. The more you read, the more complete a picture you get.

Berry is hard to categorize, and you get at that in the film where his wife Tanya says, “Some people would think he’s a novelist and some think he’s an essayist and some think he’s a poet…” How do you see him?

I see him as an artist. I think his nonfiction writing is infused with poetics all over the place. He sees segmentation or categorization as a function of the industrial mind. He very much believes in interdisciplinary thought. So I think he’s deliberately defying … category. He doesn’t want to be limited.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity. “Look and See” is available on Netflix; the trailer is below.

Ricardo Salvador, senior scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists and director of its Food and Environment Program, has spent a lifetime writing and talking about what an equitable food system might look like. On a recent, unseasonably sunny October evening at The Redd on Salmon in Portland, Oregon, he offered 800 food system innovators a reminder about the size and scope of institutional racism in our current food system, underlined the urgency of food justice work, and offered concrete actions we can all take to create positive change.

“We live in a very unjust, inequitable society,” began Salvador. “And the brunt of the inequity is felt through the food system.” Salvador detailed how we got here through the dark history of colonization—from the genocide of the myriad Native American tribes, whose land we stole, to the African citizens who were abducted and enslaved by the English and then the Americans.

“From the standpoint of an economist, the way you generate wealth is that you have access to at least one of the factors of production: land, labor, rent,” Salvador said. From the 1830s until the 1880s, he noted, we drove the original inhabitants of this continent off their land, quite literally depriving them of their food as well as their food culture.

“If you want to find some of the most immiserated human beings on the planet—not just in the United States—you would go to the concentration camps that we call the reservations,” Salvador said. “Here is where you will find people whose land was taken from them, and therefore their foodways, their ways of accessing the natural resources upon which they based their entire cultures and they way that they nourished themselves.”

Similarly, the Africans who were taken from their homeland and brought to the U.S. by the slave trade were driven against their will from their land and were forced to be the unpaid labor to allow white Americans to profit. “What those people were enslaved to do was actually to drive the beginning of what today we call Big Ag,” Salvador said.

Tragically, slavery has not disappeared. To this day, exploited farm labor is what keeps the cost of food so cheap in this country. “Farm labor is the most essential, the most important part of our food system, and the most undervalued,” Salvador said.

“We spend as little as 6 to 12 percent of our disposable income on food. That is usually quoted as something that we should be very proud of. But it should be a national shame,” he said. “It’s as if the workers involved in the food industry and nature that is required to produce the food were costs to be minimized…We need to find a way in which we actually value all of those resources—the land and the people that are involved.”

One of the long-simmering questions facing those striving for better food for all is how to go beyond voting with your fork? Is it possible to create a new food system that does not rely on exploitation?

Salvador made a case for profound system shifts like reparations, loan forgiveness programs, and immigration reform. He urged people to work independently and collectively to support these goals and the great food-system reform work that’s already afoot in our communities around this country. Among his suggestions:

• Support Reparations to the descendants of enslaved peoples. One place to start is to urge your members of Congress to support Rep. John Conyers’ (D–MI) bill, HR 40: Commission to Study Reparation Proposals for African Americans Act.

• Support immigration and labor reforms that value labor and provide for dignified livelihood. For example, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers’ Fair Food Program, and realistic transition initiatives such as the proposed “Blue Card” program.

• Get your elected officials to read and support Oregon senator Earl Blumenauer’s roadmap for an alternative Farm Bill “Growing Opportunities.”

• Get your local school district to sign onto the Good Food Purchasing program, a metric-based framework that encourages institutions to direct their buying power toward local economies, environmental sustainability, a valued workforce, animal welfare, and nutrition. (L.A. Unified School District, San Francisco Unified, Oakland Unified, and Chicago Public Schools have all already signed on.)

In closing his presentation at the Redd, Salvador came back to his original question.

“Do we know enough to create a food system that does not rely on exploitation?” he asked. “Yes, we know enough to produce our food without exploiting nature, and we definitely know enough to produce our food without exploiting people…. Let me just put a very sharp point on it for you: The question is not really: ‘Do we know enough to be better?’ The question is: ‘Will we?’”

29 September 2017

A new documentary chronicles the efforts of wheat farmers and urban gardeners as they shift to sustainable farming. {This story ran on Civil Eats on Sept. 29th, 2017.)

“I’ve never been comfortable growing lawns and golf courses when there’s a worldwide food shortage,” says Willow Coberly at the beginning of the new documentary “Gaining Ground.” Willow is married to Harry Stalford, a grass-seed farmer from Oregon’s Willamette Valley who, at the start of the film, is as conventional as they come. His transformation into a champion of organic wheat, thanks to his wife’s prodding and persistence, is the moral heart of this stirring film.

Farming in and of itself is a risky profession. “Gaining Ground” tells the stories of three farmers—two from rural Oregon and one from Richmond, California—who take additional risks to transition away from conventional, commodity farming to grow organic food. In the case of Doria Robinson, who returned to her hometown of Richmond to work at Urban Tilth, the mere act of growing sustainably farmed food in a food desert is a deeply courageous act. As she says in the film, “This is the front line, and somebody has to hold it.”

Filmmaker Elaine Velazquez and her wife, the producer and radio documentarian Barbara Bernstein, took five years to shoot and edit the film, which turned out to be a good thing. Just as they were about to wrap the shoot, two issues that had been looming in the background of their farmers’ lives—and their documentary—came front and center: The Chevron refinery in Richmond exploded and genetically modified wheat was found in an Oregon field.

The couple has been showing the film at events around Oregon and at film festivals across the country; it will have its Bay Area theatrical debut this weekend at the Food & Farm Film Festival in San Francisco. (The film will be shown on October 1 at 4 p.m.) Civil Eats spoke to Velazquez and Bernstein about the importance of forging rural-urban connections in the age of Trump, Richmond’s long tradition of farming, and why the next generation sees a future in organic farming.

19 September 2017

When Cattail Creek Lamb owner John Neumeister was younger, he would devote one day per week to making the 110-mile drive from his ranch near Junction City, Oregon to Portland, where the bulk of his customers were located.

“I’d leave the farm, drive 100 miles to the processor, pack the order myself, do the invoices by hand in the truck, and then go make 20-25 deliveries at restaurants around Portland,” said Neumeister, who will turn 70 next month. He would crash at a friend’s house in Portland, then do more deliveries the next day, on the way back home.

These 15-hour-days took their toll, but they also didn’t allow Neumeister, who has been raising pastured lamb since he took over his family’s flock in high school, any time to drum up new business or work on long-term sales strategy. And if he got a last-minute order from a Portland restaurant who suddenly ran out of lamb mid-week there was little he could do about it.

“If a chef called me on Thursday, I might say ‘You know, I can see if UPS can deliver it,’” Neumeister said. Which meant trying—sometimes in vain—to stalk his local UPS driver, whose delivery route he knew by heart. If he couldn’t locate the UPS truck, Neumeister was out of luck.

“And then the restaurant would end up buying from one of my competitors.”

A B-Line trike rider leaves the Redd with a refrigerated box full of food for Portland area restaurants

Now, thanks to the Redd on Salmon, a Portland food hub created by the environmental nonprofit Ecotrust, Neumeister not only has freezer storage space for up to 3,600 pounds of lamb in Central Eastside Portland, he’s got a stall for staging orders, an office space, and built-in distribution via B-Line trikes to Portland area restaurants.

Best of all, there’s no need to chase down UPS drivers. When a restaurant needs a special order of pastured lamb, as happened earlier this month with chef Joshua McFadden’s Tusk, all Neumeister needs to do is call B-line, who also does fulfillment for Cattail Creek.

16 August 2017

In the late spring of 2014, Janaki Jagannath and her colleagues had left a community meeting and were standing in the dusty basketball court inside Cantua Elementary School in Cantua Creek, California. Nestled deep in the west side of the San Joaquin Valley, Cantua Creek is one of the poorest communities in the state—located in one of its most lucrative agricultural regions.

The residents of Cantua Creek had just been hit with three-fold water rate hikes, which would mean paying close to $300 a month for water the local health department had found to be contaminated with high levels of disinfection byproducts, leaving it undrinkable. And residents had just been told that their water would be shut off if they couldn’t pay the new rates. Jagannath, who was then working for California Rural Legal Assistance (CRLA), was outraged.

“In California, water is the epitome of privilege,” Jagannath explained by e-mail. “At no point in this state’s history have rural residents—the people who do the work of growing, picking, and packing our agricultural commodities—had a say in where clean water should be directed. The odds have been stacked against small, local vegetable producers—and moreover against the health and safety of farmworkers—for the majority of California history.”

Standing around the local basketball court with colleagues from other farmworker advocacy organizations and environmental justice nonprofits, Jagannath realized an urgent need for these groups to come together strategically if they were to succeed in fighting the myriad injustices facing low-income farmworkers in the San Joaquin Valley.

She got her wish. A year later, at just 26, Jagannath was hired to be the first coordinator of the San Joaquin Valley Sustainable Agriculture Coalition, which she soon renamed the Community Alliance for Agroecology (CAFA). Now 28, Jagannath is known as a powerful advocate for farmworker rights, environmental justice, and political organizing in California’s San Joaquin Valley.

“Jagannath took the Alliance to a different level,” said Caroline Farrell, executive director at the Center on Race, Poverty, and the Environment, and one of the Alliance’s founders. “Her focus became ‘How do we work with small farmers of color in the valley? How do we build a good agricultural system from the ground up?’”

For two years at California Rural Legal Assistance (CRLA), Jagannath had worked one-on-one with farmworkers who had experienced pesticide exposure, harassment in the fields, and wage theft. She also worked on some larger environmental justice cases—like the episode in Cantua Creek—that were focused on communities’ access to fresh water.

In Cantua Creek, Jagannath worked alongside residents to secure subsidy funding from the state to defray their water bills, and arranged for state-funded bottled water to be delivered to each home (which is still happening to this day). Situations like the ones at Cantua Creek are symptoms of a larger illness, of course. Members of CAFA get farmworkers involved in building environmental justice solutions. For example, CAFA is currently advocating for legislation known as the Farmer Equity Act (AB 1348), which would give socially disadvantaged farmers and ranchers increased access to environmental stewardship funds.

Formative Experiences in Farming

Jagannath’s parents emigrated to the U.S. in the 1980s from South India, settling in Mobile, Alabama, where Jagannath was born. Her dad worked at paper mills in the South, and Jagannath’s childhood was punctuated by moves from one rural mill town to another. Her parents divorced when she was five, and eventually her mom moved to Southern California, where she raised Jagannath and her brother.

I fell in love with agriculture there,” Jagannath said. “I grew up wanting to farm.”

Jagannath may have been destined for a career in farming—after all, Janaki is the Hindu goddess of agriculture. “Overall, she is a central character in Hindu faith representing the ecological cycles of the planet upon which agriculture, and all of life on earth, depend,” said Jagannath. But during college at the University of California, Davis, Jagannath spent her summers working at Chino Nojo, a diversified fruit and vegetable farm in Rancho Santa Fe, California. She harvested crops—from carrots to strawberries—alongside the field crew and also worked at the farm’s vegetable shop.

She remembers picking the season’s finest heirloom tomatoes and then slicing them for Alice Waters at the back of the shed so she could taste them before loading up crates for Chez Panisse. She also recalls picking golden raspberries in late summer for Wolfgang Puck, who would drive all the way to the farm from Spago in Los Angeles.“

Working at Chino Nojo opened her eyes to the need for more farms like it—those that provide long-term, stable work for farmworkers, and employers who see farming as a dignified occupation.

“I learned a lot of what I know about farming from one farmworker there, Rene Herrera, who has worked there for most of his life, and his father before him,” Jagannath said. “Those kinds of jobs are rare as a farmworker—because farms like the Chino family’s are equally rare and precious places.”

At UC Davis, Jagannath “got politicized,” she said. She discovered the vocabulary with which to explain the environmental downside of her dad’s jobs working at paper mills throughout the South—and learned about the concept of environmental justice.

At the Community Alliance for Agroecology, there are three main areas of work: policy advocacy (as with the Farmer Equity Act, or trying to establish a drinking water fund for rural residents paid for by Big Ag polluters), local agroecology organizing (such as holding farmer-to-farmer exchanges on agroecology and market enhancement), and building political power for systems change (they host trainings in the areas of food systems history, campaign planning, communications, policy advocacy and organizing). Right now, the organization’s biggest policy push is on the Farmer Equity Act, though the group has also been actively trying to get the state to channel some of the subsidies it grants to large dairies with methane digesters to “alternative manure-management strategies” like pasture-based dairies.

Promoting soil health is another major area of the Alliance’s focus. “Janaki knows all this information about soil health,” said Genoveva Islas, Program Director at Cultiva La Salud. “It really does help to highlight our connection back to the earth, and why it’s so important to preserve it.”

In addition to composting and manure management, CAFA is championing a practice known as orchard recycling. “Rather than growing an almond tree for 25 years and pulling it out and burning it in field, you take that material and blend it back into the soil,” explained Janaki. “We’re essentially trying to close the loop.”

But probably the most exciting part of CAFA’s work right now—especially in the Trump era—lies in developing a so-called “organizer academy” led by two United Farm Workers-trained organizers that will teach community members and farmworkers about food-systems history, campaign planning, communications, policy advocacy, and organizing. “The curriculum is taught in a way that’s evocative of the 1960s and 70s organizing strategies that were successful in winning some of the major battles for equity for farmworkers,” said Jagannath. So far, the pilot project has been for CAFA staff only, but Janaki envisions trainings for farmworkers in the near future.

“We can’t just advocate for reform and regulation,” Jagannath said. “Instead, we’re working on how to build political power amongst farmworker communities, to ensure our local and state elections have representation for communities of color who have been paying taxes but not receiving any of the benefits.”

Update: Jagannath will be attending UC Davis law school in the fall to study Environmental Law with a focus on agriculture and land use. CAFA is currently seeking a new coordinator.

31 January 2017

When a group of restaurant owners from the Restaurant Opportunities Center United (ROC United) held their most recent virtual meeting, members shared their employees’ fear of a Trump administration. “They expressed concern over the well-being of their employees, who are traumatized. And their concern over the feasibility of their businesses if Trump does enact all of these policies,” said Sheila Maddali, co-director of the Tipped Worker Resource Center at ROC United.

So in early January, members of ROC United’s national restaurant employer association, RAISE, wrote a letter to President-elect Trump asking for a pathway to citizenship. Inspired by their members’ courage, and their willingness to use their collective voice, ROC’s leadership banded together with Presente.org, the nation’s largest Latino online organizing group, and launched the Sanctuary Restaurant campaign.

In just two weeks—and without publicizing the campaign—65 restaurants across the country signed on to become Sanctuary Restaurants, prominently displaying window signs that they are a safe place for undocumented immigrants, Blacks, Muslims, and the LGBTQ community. Restaurants span the country and include Coi in San Francisco, Lil’s in Kittery, Maine, Honey Butter Fried Chicken in Chicago, and ROC United’s own restaurant, Colors, in Detroit and New York City.

In addition to publicly committing to a zero-tolerance policy for racism, sexism, and xenophobia, these restaurants are part of a rapid response network that will offer strategies for protecting targeted workers and informational trainings on legal rights. They have also created a number employees can text if they’re experiencing harassment or injustice: text TABLE to 225568.

ROC United’s effort is just one of many like it. As Trump is sworn is as the 45th president of the United States, the restaurant industry is understandably on the front lines: Trump made it crystal clear during the campaign that he wants to deport all undocumented immigrants and build a wall between the U.S. and Mexico. This is serious news for restaurant workers, as the Pew Research Center estimates that at least 1.2 million in the U.S. are undocumented.

Chefs Take Action

In addition to longer-term planning to protect vulnerable communities from the Trump agenda, chefs across the country have taken the inauguration as an opportunity to do good in their own communities, by either welcoming them into their restaurants or hosting pop-up fundraisers for progressive causes.

Renee Erickson, the James Beard Award-winning chef from Seattle’s Walrus and the Carpenter and Whale Wins, is hosting a fundraiser at her Capitol Hill hotspot, Bar Melusine, on January 20. Funds will go to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), which fights anti-Semitism and all forms of bigotry.

In Portland, Oregon, Le Pigeon and Little Bird will donate 5 percent of sales on Inauguration Day to three organizations that provide legal services for new immigrants. The same day, Chez Panisse, Mission Chinese, Zuni Café, and 21 other celebrated Bay Area restaurants will each serve a dish using manoomin, the wild rice cultivated by the Ojibwe people. Proceeds from that dish will go to Honor the Earth, a nonprofit that works to revive indigenous food traditions and has been deeply involved in the resistance at Standing Rock. The fundraiser, called #FoodStand, will extend to the Good Food Awards, which take place in San Francisco over inauguration weekend.

Cookie Grab & Other Fundraising Efforts

Other actions are already underway. In Portland, Oregon, 21 female bakers and chefs participated in a “Cookie Grab” that raised $27,500 for Planned Parenthood Columbia Willamette. The pink boxes, costing $50 and containing 21 cookies, sold out within 24 hours.

“It was a truly amazing response that we did not expect,” said Sarah Minnick, owner of Portland’s Lovely’s Fifty-Fifty and co-organizer of the Cookie Grab. “When the donation coordinator for Planned Parenthood called to see how she could help us promote the fundraiser, I told her we were already sold out and she cried.”

Now, Minnick and co-organizer Kristen Murray, the chef and owner of Portland luncheonette Maurice, plan to do the Cookie Grab two times a year to generate money and excitement for Planned Parenthood. In Bellingham, Washington a group of bakers and chefs organized their own Cookie Grab in early January, selling all 75 boxes of cookies for $40 each in 24 hours, earning $3,000 for Mt. Baker Planned Parenthood Healthcare Center.

Organizer Cara Piscitello of Acme Farms + Kitchen says they already have plans in the works for a second fundraiser to mark Trump’s 100th day in office. “Should any other crisis or extreme injustice arise before then, we are ready to take action and pitch in where we can,” said Piscitello.

“A lot of people we love and support—our family and friends—are in groups that are potentially going to be ignored or treated poorly, based on the new administration,” said Erickson. She chose the ADL as her charity for its longstanding commitment to protecting civil rights for all. The group’s efforts cover a broad range, including cyberbullying prevention workshops in schools across the country.

“There are so many issues and this one covered the most bases,” said Erickson. The ADL looks out for all people who might experience discrimination or hate.” She added that the fundraiser at Bar Melusine is an open house party—there is no exclusive invite list or $200 per plate fee. “This way we can invite people from all parts of our lives—some that will give lots of money and some who will give nothing at all, but who will be supportive.”

In addition to asking guests for donations, Erickson and her staff will auction off works by prominent Seattle artists Curtis Steiner and Jeffry Mitchell. Erickson’s main suppliers—Hama Hama Oyster Co., Willowood Farms, and Sea Wolf Bakers—are all donating food to the event; cases of wine and liquor will also be donated.

In Washington, D.C., an all-volunteer initiative called All in Service has recruited 124 restaurants and retailers to donate a percentage of their profits from inauguration weekend to local charities. Establishments include places like Tryst, Momofuku CCDC, and Glen’s Garden Market; charities will range from those that support the local migrant community to LGBTQ issues and homelessness.

Also in D.C., on January 19 and 20, Italian café and food emporium Via Umbria in Georgetown will host a $25 cocktail class, “Cheers to Powerful Women,” that will feature classic American cocktails inspired by powerful American women. All profits from the classes will go to Planned Parenthood. Pizzeria Paradiso’s Dupont Circle location will be serving pints from women-owned Denizens Brewing Company; 100 percent of all proceeds will go to the League of Women Voters.

Instead of fundraising, Seattle chef Josh Henderson is opening up two of his restaurants on inauguration day to feed the houseless or any Seattleite who needs a free hearty meal. “Trump represents disunity. I just want to show that there are people who represent the opposite of that. That there’s love and hope,” said Henderson. The restaurants, Quality Athletics in Pioneer Square and Canteen in South Lake Union, will serve spaghetti and meatballs, Caesar salad, garlic bread, and apple pie on Friday afternoon.

Most chefs are quick to say that doing good is not a partisan issue—or shouldn’t be. “No matter what our guests’ political beliefs are, they are welcome in our restaurants,” said Le Pigeon co-owners Gabriel Rucker and Andy Fortgang in a statement explaining their choice to donate to local immigrant rights groups. Yet, the statement continues, the climate for immigrants could be more hostile with the incoming administration. “The restaurant business has always been a major employer of immigrants and it is a group we care deeply about. Helping others is not a protest—it’s what we feel is the right thing to do.”

Even so, there’s bound to be pushback—customers who will insist they don’t go to restaurants for political reasons. But Katherine Miller, executive director of the Chef Action Network and senior director of food policy advocacy at the James Beard Foundation, thinks it’s wonderful that so many restaurants are finding creative ways to be there for their employees and all customers during a time of fear and tension.

“Restaurants are your communities these days. These chefs are leaders in their communities,” said Miller. “They’re really showing their support for American values—the things that make us great as a country.”

29 August 2016

It’s 10:00 a.m. on a Thursday morning in late July, and 15 families are lined up outside SnowCap Community Charities in the Rockwood neighborhood of Portland, Oregon. Many have been waiting for over an hour in hopes that they’ll get first dibs at this food pantry, which is the largest in the state, serving over 9,000 people a month. The old model was that food pantries gave clients a pre-packed box of food. But SnowCap, like an increasing number of food pantries across the U.S., allows clients to “shop” or choose for themselves what they want to eat. There are limitations on some items, and generally speaking, the earlier they arrive, the better the pickings.

Another reason clients arrive early is SnowCap’s impressive assortment of seasonal produce from local farms. Amongst the offerings on display today are enormous green zucchinis, pattypan squash, purple turnips, greenbeans, lettuce, mushrooms, onions, and cherries from a farm in the Columbia River Gorge. There are also huge bags of frozen diced carrots, with or without corn.

A willowy 33-year-old woman named Erin takes a five-pound clamshell container of luscious-looking cherries and tells me she has been a regular at SnowCap for a year. “I cook a lot,” she says. “I make an ‘end of the week soup’ using up whatever is left in the fridge.” She especially loves the squash, radishes, and tomatoes, when they’re available. What will she do with the cherries? “Eat them immediately!”

Mona, a thirty-something woman from Egypt, has loaded her cart with apples, cherries, and purple turnips. She spurns the zucchini and the summer squash—“I don’t like these!” she says, wrinkling her nose—but loads up on purple turnips, which she likes to pickle. “My children love them!” she says. Claw, a Burmese woman wearing dangly silver earrings and a sequined T-shirt, says she likes to fry up vegetables with onions and chiles and make a Pad Thai.

The bulk of the fresh produce at SnowCap comes from Farmers Ending Hunger, a group of 100-plus farmers across the state who donate a portion of their crops. “Growers get the idea of feeding hungry people,” says executive director John Burt. “They get that and they step up.”

Like other organizations that have been popping up around the country—from Farm to Food Pantry in Washington state to Michigan Agricultural Surplus Program—Farmers Ending Hunger aims to recover the imperfect or “ugly” produce for which farmers can’t get top dollar. However, instead of purchasing produce, Farmers Ending Hunger asks farmers to make a donation. The organization was founded in 2006 by agricultural engineer and president of IRZ Consulting, Fred Ziari, when he learned that Oregon was one of the hungriest states in America. (Ten years later, it still clocks in at Number 10 in the USDA’s ranking of least food-secure states.)

At the time, Ziari, who lives in the farm belt on the eastern side of Oregon, began having conversations with nearby farmers and ranchers, asking them if they’d donate some of their crops to the hungry. What started with 173,000 pounds of frozen peas from a handful of growers has blossomed into an organization that donated 4.2 million pounds of farm-fresh food to the Oregon Food Bank last year. Two million pounds were potatoes and 1 million was onions, but the remainder was comprised of a huge variety of fresh fruits, vegetables, local wheat, and even hamburger meat from an eastern Oregon ranch.

Erin, 33, loves fresh cherries and plans to eat these immediately

Growers range in size from a philanthropist in Hood River who has a two-acre pear orchard to Orchard View Cherries (the source of the cherries at SnowCap), which grows fruit on 2,400 acres in and around The Dalles.

This was the first year that Orchard View Cherries, a 4th generation family-owned orchard, gave to Farmers Ending Hunger. Thanks to a new high-tech Italian sorting machine called Unitec Cherry Vision 2 (yes, it photographs each individual cherry!), the cherries are efficiently sorted into two channels. Perfect, unblemished are sent abroad to Japan or Dubai or to U.S. chains like Whole Foods and Safeway. Those that are slightly misshaped or off-color either go to the Oregon Cherry Growers for processing (into a brine or Maraschino cherries) and s Farmers Ending Hunger.

“When you’re selling to the retail buyer, they want the cherries to look pretty well perfect,” explains owner Ken Bailey. “The machine can determine what is too soft to put into the pack for retail.” So even though the cherries destined for Farmers Ending Hunger look flawless to most mortals, they’ll only remain that way for a few days.

In many states, farmers find it cheaper to leave fruit in the field rather than pay for labor and transport costs. In Oregon, according to Burt, the vast majority of farms giving to Farmers Ending Hunger give produce that would otherwise be sold for good money.

“We try to generate stuff right out of harvest,” says Burt. “It comes right out of the line—no different than what you buy in the store.” So farms are, in effect, donating product as well as labor. But Farmers Ending Hunger makes it easy for farmers to say “yes,” because they often provide transport (via the Oregon Food Bank or OFB), packaging, and sometimes even volunteer labor.

During harvest, an OFB truck arrives at Orchard View Cherry once a week, delivering the cherries to the central warehouse in NE Portland within two hours. There, OFB volunteers pack the cherries into plastic clamshells (purchased by Farmers Ending Hunger), stack them into cardboard totes which are then sent out to a network of 21 regional food banks throughout the state. (From there, they may be delivered to smaller school or church pantries in each community.)

“Without these materials, it would have been very difficult to deliver the product to the regional food banks and agencies in a client-friendly pack size, without damaging the cherries,” explains Katie Pearmine, the Strategic Sourcing Manager at the Oregon Food Bank. “Food banks don’t typically have budget for this type of material, so this is actually what made it work.” The whole delivery process takes about 24 hours, from farm to food bank. The same routine happens with other perishable crops across the state.

All-told, Orchard View Cherry donated 85,000 pounds of hand-picked fruit to Farmers Ending Hunger this summer. But Bailey wouldn’t have done it without the urging of executive director John Burt. “We get so wrapped up in our harvest and activities,” says Bailey. In addition to buying the plastic clamshell containers, Farmers Ending Hunger makes it easy for farmers by filling out the paperwork and (via its relationship with the OFB) handling distribution. The farm also gets an Oregon state tax credit of 15 percent of the value of the fruit donated. (Labor costs are not factored into tax credit.) Farmers who donate can also get a federal deduction on their taxes.

Pearmine at Oregon Food Bank, who is also a former Farmers Ending Hunger board member, emphasizes that getting fresh produce to food insecure Oregonians—while not easy or cheap—has everything to do with the strategic partnership between farmers and processors, Farmers Ending Hunger, and the Oregon Food Bank.

“You ask a farmer to donate and they are like, ‘I don’t have access to cash.’ And then you say, ‘Where do you have excess in your food stream?’ or ‘What can you do that can help people in poverty the most?’ Those are the questions that John Burt asks farmers.”

03 August 2015

Sofresh Farms, in Canby, Oregon, is not what I expect. When I finally find it, on an out-of-the-way gravel road, I’m struck by how ordinary this rural neighborhood is. There’s a produce farm on one side; a man raising Longhorn cattle on the other. Magnificent Mount Hood dominates the skyline. Other than the 8-foot-high wooden fence surrounding the property, there’s nothing to tip me off that this is a cannabis farm.

Further complicating my notion of a typical pot farm, I’m met at the gate by a tow-headed three-year-old boy wearing silver wings. “Do you know where Tyson is?” I ask, mentioning the grower by name. The boy looks at me skeptically until I introduce myself.

“What’s your name?” I ask.

“Theo,” he says.

After texting Tyson again, I ask Theo if he might be able to help me locate him. He opens the gate, offers me his tiny hand, and leads me down a flagstone path to a greenhouse.

Tyson Haworth, a freckled 36-year-old farmer emerges from the greenhouse, wearing sunglasses and a worn Sofresh T-shirt. “I see you’ve met my son,” Haworth says, chuckling. As he shows me where to park, Haworth says he loves farming cannabis right where he lives.

“My kids will never know that pot was illegal,” he says.

Tyson Haworth at Sofresh Farms

Like many who have been growing for the medical marijuana market in Oregon, Haworth is over-the-moon that the state legalized recreational use of the drug last fall. He’s on a mission to destigmatize cannabis. “Marijuana was used for millennia,” he tells me, noting that the Chinese have long prescribed the plant for medicinal purposes. “And it was in the U.S. Pharmacopeia until 1942!” But he’s also on a mission to prove to other cannabis growers that you can successfully grow pot using agroecological farming methods.

“I’ve got little kids! I don’t want toxic chemicals around,” says Haworth, who intersperses his rapid-fire facts about cannabis farming with quotes from organic pioneer Elliot Coleman and organic soil guru Jeff Lowenfells. Though Haworth’s farm will never be USDA-certified organic (that is, until marijuana is legalized at the federal level), it is verified by Clean Green Certified, one of the only third-party certifiers to hold cannabis farmers to national and international organic standards.

The Making of an Eco-Label

If you smoke a joint, you’re not just inhaling THC and other cannabinoids. You’re also likely breathing in dangerous neurotoxins and cancer-causing chemicals.

Now that recreational marijuana is legal in four states—Alaska, Colorado, Oregon, and Washington—a dirty little secret about the pot industry has surfaced. Pot growers—especially those who cultivate plants indoors—rely heavily on pesticides.

A host of pests and other plagues can devastate cannabis crops: spider mites, root aphids, mosaic virus, and downy mildew are just a handful. Many cannabis farmers tend to turn to insecticides and other chemicals as a quick fix.

“Whether it’s medical or adult recreational use, you need to be concerned with the manner in which it’s grown, because you’re ingesting it,” cautions Van Hook. The way it’s ingested matters too; preliminary studies show that marijuana concentrates like oil and hash contain much higher pesticide residue levels than buds.

Pesticides aren’t the only problem, either. A new paper in the journal Bioscience documents the environmental havoc wreaked by illegal marijuana farming in California. In an interview with Yale 360, the paper’s author talks about the way these farms “siphon off scarce water resources, poison wildlife, erode fragile soils, and overload waters with nutrients.”

Van Hook founded Clean Green Certified a decade ago. A U.S. Department of Agriculture-accredited organic certifier as well as a lawyer, Van Hook has worked in agriculture and aquaculture his whole life. In 2003, Van Hook was approached by a grower who wanted him to certify her cannabis as USDA organic. Van Hook explained that he couldn’t do that with a crop that is still illegal at the federal level, but the grower argued that there was a need for third-party certification. Van Hook discovered he could use U.S. and international organic standards to certify cannabis as long as he and certified growers don’t use the word “organic” or “USDA organic” to describe their product. Clean Green was born.

Before growers can become Clean Green certified, they must fill out an application with details about water use and energy use; soil erosion prevention; and how they plan to combat pests, weeds, and diseases. Clean Green inspects each farm annually, reviewing the farm’s inputs—from fertilizers and potting soils to sprays. Finally, the company tests the soil for 75 compounds at a federally licensed agricultural lab. (As Noelle Crombie at the Oregonianrecently reported, unlicensed labs tend to have inconsistent practices and can produce inaccurate results.)

To be Clean Green certified, you must also have a carbon reduction plan in place, whether that means buying renewable energy and using more efficient lighting or locating your dispensary close to your grow operation to cut down on transportation-related emissions.

“People in educated urban areas need to bring the same attention to the cannabis industry that they bring to their food and to their shade-grown, bird-friendly organic coffee. And they need to do it this year!” Van Hook says, a note of impatience creeping into his voice.

It seems some already are. To date, Van Hook has certified nearly 100 growers, processors, and handlers and says he’s seen an uptick in applications since Oregon legalized marijuana. Tyson Haworth at Sofresh Farms is one of them.

The greenhouse at Sofresh Farms

From Fish Oil to Beneficial Bugs: Taking it to the Next Level

Haworth came to cannabis farming via organic agriculture. He worked for the produce distribution company Organically Grown Co. for 13 years before starting an indoor tomato farm. But it wasn’t until his wife Michelle had her second back surgery that the couple started to grow marijuana. Michelle was hesitant to take the opiates her doctor prescribed because she feared addiction. Smoking pot gave her immediate relief from the incessant pain. Eventually, realizing he could earn much more growing medical marijuana than he could growing off-season tomatoes, Haworth started Sofresh in 2012. There was no question that he’d farm cannabis using organic practices.

This summer, Haworth is growing outdoors for the first time. The plants will grow to be nine feet wide and twelve feet tall. Although Haworth still cultivates some plants indoors, he doesn’t think it’s the future—especially now that pot is legal in Oregon.

“It’s harder to control pests indoors,” says Haworth. “You have to play mother nature. And she’s very good at her job.”

Soil health is of critical importance to Haworth. First, he puts down a layer of straw, then a layer of soil mixed with biochar, a soil amendment akin to what you’d find in an old growth forest. Then he adds a layer of compost or worm castings and then a final layer of straw. Finally, the soil and the plants are inoculated with mycorrhizae, which creates an intelligent food highway underneath the roots.

Sofresh is also one of the only cannabis farms in the U.S. that practices no-till agriculture. In its small 600 square-foot grow room (formerly a horse barn), I’m surprised to see wooden planks between the rows of impressively flowering Nuken, Black Betty, and Sweet Tooth—the strain that won the Amsterdam Cannabis Cup in 2001. Tattooed workers balance on the planks as they thin the canopy, so as not to disturb the soil.

“It’s important that there’s no compaction,” explains Haworth as he shows me around. “Lack of moisture and compaction are what kill the soil.” After harvest, the workers cut the plants and leave the stem to decay into the soil. Where other farmers apply myclobutanil, Haworth keeps mildew and mold at bay with fans and a large dehumidifier, and keeps the plants thinned for better air flow.

Haworth and his staff also spray the cannabis leaves with a compost-and-roasted-eggshell-tea, which is high in calcium, explains farm manager Missy LaGuardia. Calcium deficiencies can make cannabis plants more susceptible to pests. LaGuardia keeps the plant moist by spraying a mixture of aloe and fish oil on the leaves. “It mimics a really healthy mid-summer rain,” says LaGuardia, who usually sprays it at night.

LaGuardia says they populate the farm with ladybugs as soon as they see signs of aphids. Outdoors, natural predators like tree frogs and mice do their share of work, though LaGuardia admits they also eat the beneficial bugs.

The ladybugs released indoors are smart: Unless there’s a sustained source of food, they’ll escape. So LaGuardia keeps what she calls a “ladybug altar” in one corner of the greenhouse—a decomposing cannabis plant rife with aphids. She points out little orange clusters. “These are ladybug eggs!” she says, smiling triumphantly. I gasp, wondering if a conventional pot farmer would ever take such a risk. “Aren’t you worried this will lead to an aphid outbreak?” She shrugs her shoulders. “You’ve got to leave a little for nature.”

23 February 2015

Last fall, after wondering for years about whether I should buy produce from farmers who claim that they are “organic, but not certified,” I dug into some big questions about certification. That process led me to explore many other seemingly respectable food labels that—while much less popular than organic—seemed to offer a similar, if slightly different level of transparency between eaters and farmers.

Back in 2002, when the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) launched its National Organic Program (NOP), sustainably minded farmers around the U.S. rejoiced. But a handful of farmers from New York’s Hudson Valley were less enthusiastic. Though they were committed to organic practices, they weren’t convinced that the USDA program was an ideal fit—especially considering the cost and paperwork involved.

So they formed a grassroots nonprofit called Certified Naturally Grown (CNG), with its own set of standards and a certification process to go with them. “They felt organic [certification] was better suited to larger operations and wholesale channels where there wasn’t that connection between the farmer and the eater,” explains Alice Varon, Executive Director of CNG.

The CNG standards are based on the organic standards; they don’t allow synthetic pesticides, herbicides, or GMO seeds, and they require crop rotation and soil amendments. But the program is broader in its scope. Since 2010, it has covered not only produce farmers and livestock producers, but beekeepers as well. (The USDA does have organic standards for apiculture in the works, but they aren’t scheduled to hit the market until 2016.) CNG is also in the process of developing standards for aquaponics and mushroom cultivation.

CNG involves much less paperwork than the USDA organic program—at a more reasonable cost. That’s in part because the organization employs a peer-review inspection process: Each annual on-farm inspection is done by another CNG farmer. For free. In fact, all certified farms must inspect at least one other farm.

“A lot of farmers are drawn to our peer-review inspection process,” says Varon. “They feel a great deal of ownership in it. And it gives them a chance to connect with one another.”

They’re also drawn to the lower certification cost. While USDA organic certification can be prohibitive for small-scale operations (as much as $1,000 a year, depending on the size), CNG has a sliding scale that starts at $100 per year. CNG also has a scholarship fund for beginning farmers or those who have suffered unusual difficulties such as extreme weather or physical injury.

Farmer Rick Reddaway, who has a “petite” vegetable farm in Orient, Oregon, grew weary of telling his farmers’ markets customers, “No, I’m not certified organic, but I do grow everything without pesticides or herbicides.” Wanting some accountability, he chose CNG both for its lower cost and because it doesn’t require conventionally farmed land go through a three-year transition period before it can get be certified.

The CNG application asks farmers if any prohibited pesticides or herbicides have been used on their fields over the past three years. If the answer is yes, CNG will allow a farmer to have “CNG transitional status” as she transitions her farm from conventional to organic. Reddaway was able to get full CNG certification because the East Multnomah Soil & Water Conservation District, which owns his land, told him it had been fallow for three years.

“I’m in an incubator program on land that I’ll soon have to leave, so it just didn’t make sense for me to do USDA organic certification,” says Reddaway.

Farmer Rashid Nuri, who runs an urban farm in Atlanta, Georgia called Truly Living Well, says USDA organic standards were much too onerous for him. “I have multiple farm sites and 10 years ago, each site had to have its own documents to be certified organic,” says Nuri. Though this rule has since changed, Nuri is a loyal member of CNG.

To make certification as transparent to consumers as possible, the grower’s complete application is posted on the CNG website, as is the last date of inspection and the name of the certifying farmer. “We take comfort in the fact that our website is completely up-to-date,” says Varon. When she gets the occasional call from a consumer saying that a farmer using the CNG logo isn’t up on the CNG site, Varon sends the farmer a letter.

So why would one choose CNG produce over organic? Since CNG is tailored to direct-market farmers, the CNG label typically means your produce is coming from a local farm. Though some organic produce comes from local farms as well, much of the organic produce you find at Whole Foods or Walmart has been shipped from great distances. Organic, in other words, does not always mean small, community-supported farms. CNG produce may also be less expensive than certified organic, though it depends on where the farmer is located and the scale of her operation.

On the down side for farmers, Certified Naturally Grown doesn’t have anywhere near the name recognition of the certified organic label, nor is it as ubiquitous. But since 2002, membership has been steadily climbing, mostly via word-of-mouth. CNG has 740 certified farms and apiaries in the U.S. The highest concentration of CNG-certified farms is in the Southeast, with a preponderance of them in Georgia.

Varon thinks that’s because organic never developed a strong foothold in the Southeast. “There wasn’t this sense that organic is the only game in town,” says Varon. “And certainly, in the South, you have a resistance to government-run programs!”

Food Alliance

While the organic standards are seen as relatively stringent by many, they are notoriously lacking when it comes to labor and and animal welfare standards. And some farmers believe they could have a wider environmental scope as well. That’s where the Food Alliance label comes in.

When Karl Kupers and Fred Fleming began selling Shepherd’s Grain flour in 2003, they went with Food Alliance because its standards went “beyond organic.”

“What appealed to us was Food Alliance’s broader and deeper look at agriculture and food in general,” says Shepard’s Grain General Manager Mike Moran. Like organic growers, Food Alliance-certified farmers cannot grow genetically modified seeds or use high-toxicity pesticides, and they must also practice integrated pest management, an ecosystem-based approach.

But in addition, Food Alliance farmers must practice soil and water conservation, wildlife habitat and biodiversity conservation, and prove that they’re offering safe and fair working conditions for employees. That last part means having a grievance procedure, a nondiscrimination policy, and offering benefits like health insurance and bonuses, among other things.

In addition to crops, Food Alliance has standards for livestock operations, shellfish farms, nurseries and greenhouses, and even food handling operations. “This appealed to us because you can certify that everybody who touches your product is aligned to the same philosophy,” says Moran. So, not only do all 38 farmer-owners at Shepherd’s Grain have to be certified, but the Old Centennial Mill in Spokane, Washington, owned by ADM, has to be certified as well.

Food Alliance was founded in 1998—four years before any national organic standards existed. The organization doesn’t forbid the use of all synthetic pesticides and herbicides, but it does ban all chemicals that the World Health Organization classifies as “extremely hazardous” and “highly hazardous.” This means that chemicals like glyphosate and diuron (both classified by the WHO as only “slightly hazardous”) are permitted. However, executive director Matthew Buck says the organization’s focus on Integrated Pest Management is meant to reduce if not eliminate the need for chemical applications.

“Our strategy is to first prevent the problem so no treatments are necessary,” says Buck. “Use of chemical treatment is absolutely your last resort—if you’re going to lose the crop and your livelihood.”

Some farmers prefer this because it gives them wiggle-room if they can’t use IPM to suppress a pest that’s decimating their crop. FA also allows farmers some leeway on chemical fertilizer applications (unlike organic), but the hope is that using cover-cropping, on-site composting, and integrating livestock into crop production will prod farmers to use much less commercial fertilizers.

Food Alliance’s inspection is not as affordable as CNG’s, but that’s because Food Alliance works with a third-party auditor, International Certification Services. The inspection fee ranges from $600-$1,100 for three years, which works out to around $200-$350 per year. (There is also an annual licensing fee, based on a percentage of gross sales, that’s paid directly to Food Alliance.)

For farmers, there are trade-offs. Buck likes to use the example of an organic wheat grower, who creates a risk of erosion every time he or she tills the ground. (Most organic wheat farmers rely on tillage to prevent weed growth.) A Food Alliance-certified wheat grower, on the other hand, can “direct-seed” with minute amounts of chemical fertilizer and they don’t need to take as many passes through the fields. Not only are they conserving oil, they’re building organic soil matter and sequestering carbon. “I think there are many benefits to organic agriculture and it represents an improvement over ‘conventional,’ but I don’t think organic is the paragon of sustainable agriculture,” says Buck.

Margaret Reeves, Ph.D., senior scientist at the Pesticide Action Network, supports organic because of the integrity of the label. But she understands the appeal of Food Alliance. “I have visited some of the big organic farms, that for all intents and purposes look pretty darn conventional, except they don’t use the disallowed products,” says Reeves. “Food Alliance goes beyond that by offering the environmental stewardship parts that organic does not.” Reeves has also been involved in the creation of a new business-to-business certification process called the Equitable Food Initiative, which is aimed at protecting farmworkers from pesticide exposure and abusive working conditions.

So what’s a conscientious consumer to do? Luckily, it’s not usually a choice between one sustainable label and the other. Usually—whether you’re at the farmers’ market, food co-op or the grocery store—you’re deciding between a conventional apple and and an organic apple or a conventional apple and a CNG apple.“There really are complimentary efforts out there,” says Reeves. “It comes down to what’s available.”

17 December 2014

Each winter, tens of millions of Americans buy and decorate Christmas trees. Yet few of us think about what it takes to keep these trees looking so healthy and lush.

For most growers, it takes pesticides–and lots of them. It turns out that the majority of Christmas tree farms are plagued with destructive pests and noxious weeds that suck nutrients and moisture from the soil, leaving young trees sickly and ugly. As a result, the Christmas tree industry has become dependent on chemicals of all sorts. Most Christmas tree growers regularly spray Roundup and other herbicides to control noxious weeds and Lorsban—an organophospate insecticide that has been linked to nervous system damage, among other things—to kill aphids, which damage trees by yellowing foliage and stunting growth. Growers also use fungicides to control diseases.

We don’t eat our Christmas trees, but we do live with them in our homes for a few weeks at a time. Should we be worried that our children or pets are being exposed to residual chemicals?

Though no studies have been conducted to see if Christmas trees still have pesticides on them at harvest, Chal Landgren, a Christmas tree specialist at Oregon State University’s Department of Horticulture, says the amount of residue still on the tree by the time it gets to your house is minor.

That’s because most pesticides are sprayed in the spring or summer, so by the time December comes around, they’ve been broken down by the elements. According to Jeffrey Jenkins, Ph.D., an environmental toxicologist and professor at Oregon State University, every pesticide label also has a “pre-harvest interval” on it telling farmers when they can apply their last spray before harvest. “These products have been evaluated by the EPA and they have a very long and involved process for evaluating potential impacts on human health,” says Jenkins.

Even if consumers aren’t being exposed to these chemicals, it’s still a worthy goal to reduce their use on Christmas tree farms–both to minimize workers’ exposure and to curtail the amount of toxic chemicals that trickle into our rivers and oceans, threatening the health of aquatic life.

Oregon is the largest Christmas tree producer in the nation. Over 6 million trees are harvested in the state every year, and they are shipped all over the world—from Hawaii and New York City to Mexico. In fact, one reason Christmas tree farmers use so many pesticides is because countries like Mexico strictly enforce rules banning pests on imports. (Hawaii, which just received a shipment of about 200,000 Oregon trees, is similarly strict.) Though no one knows how many pesticides the state’s Christmas tree industry uses—funding for a program requiring reporting was cut in 2008—over 500 pesticide labels are registered for use by the Oregon Christmas tree industry.

Exactly how much pesticide from Christmas tree farms is ending up in Oregon’s rivers and streams is unknown. But The Oregon Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) has been monitoring pesticide levels in the Clackamas River annually since 2005 and has found many toxic pesticides at levels exceeding EPA benchmarks. Among the most worrying, according to DEQ’s toxics coordinator Kevin Masterson, are chlorpyrifos (Lorsban), bifenthrin (Brigade), and chlorothalonil (Bravo Weather Stik). At least two of these—chlorpyrifos and chlorothalonil—are used by the Christmas tree industry, which is concentrated along the Clackamas River watershed. Not only does the Clackamas River provide drinking water for over 300,000 Oregonians, it’s a wild salmon stronghold and supports populations of winter steelhead, cutthroat trout, and lamprey.

Fortunately, two new Oregon programs are underway that teach Christmas tree growers how to reduce chemical use by practicing integrated pest management.

Last year, an interagency team called the Clackamas Basin Pesticide Stewardship Partnership was awarded state funding to work with the two biggest agriculture sectors along the Clackamas River: nurseries and Christmas tree farms. The Partnership—which is comprised of the Oregon Environmental Council, Oregon State University (OSU), and the Clackamas County Soil and Water Conservation District, among other groups—has focused on educating growers about how to reduce pesticide use, risk, and runoff. Over the past year, Integrated Pest Management (IPM) experts at OSU have designed pesticide risk reduction trainings, including a beneficial insect workshop for Christmas tree farmers. (There will be another training this February.)

These workshops give growers who do want to phase out pesticides the tools to do so. But they probably won’t phase them out entirely, admits Allison Hensey, program director for agriculture and watersheds at the Oregon Environmental Council. “Christmas tree customers demand a perfect-looking product,” she wrote via e-mail. “This means growers have to find highly effective pest control methods to avoid aesthetic damage to their crops.”

The other program is Socially and Environmentally Responsible Farm (SERF), a certification tool for sustainable Christmas tree farms that Landgren helped launch. Founded in 2011, SERF requires farms to prove they have a robust sustainability plan, with active programs in five areas: biodiversity, integrated pest management, soil and water conservation, worker safety, and farm stewardship. A SERF-certified Christmas tree isn’t 100 percent pesticide-free, but if you buy a tree with the SERF logo, you can be sure the farm is working to reduce its use of toxic chemicals and prevent soil erosion. So far, the program—which certifies only Oregon and Washington farms—has certified four farms. (If you can’t find a SERF-certified tree near you, Certified Naturally Grown has certified one Christmas tree farm in North Carolina and there are six USDA organic Christmas tree farms).

Straw water bars at Noble Mountain in Salem

Noble Mountain, a 4,000-acre Christmas tree farm in Salem, Oregon, was one of the first to apply for certification. “We’ve always tried to do what’s right for the ground and the soil—it’s our livelihood,” says farmer and General Manager Bob Schaefer. Back in 1985, Schaefer introduced “straw water bars”—bales of straw placed strategically along the hillside to reduce erosion (see photo above). He also discovered that ladybugs love to eat aphid eggs, which reduced reliance on broad-spectrum chemicals like Lorsban. “We were doing a lot of things right, but we weren’t documenting it,” he says.

The SERF program got him to document these proactive environmental practices, and pushed Schaefer and his crew of 70 full-time workers to take their practices to the next level.

To fulfill the IPM category, for example, Schaefer trained his crew to identify every plant on the farm—beneficial plants as well as weeds—in addition to insects, birds, and other animals. As a result, his employees have become indispensable to catching problems early, spotting pests that attack the trees’ roots, and patches of Canadian Thistle, which, like other weeds, compete with young trees for soil nutrients and moisture.

“Thirty years ago, you’d spray the whole field with Roundup,” says Schaefer. Today, workers use specific herbicides for specific weeds: Stinger for Canadian Thistle; Asulox for Bracken Fern. (The farm does still use Roundup for general weed control, but they use it far less.) Instead of spraying pesticides via helicopter, crew members now go out and target the few trees that are infested. This approach not only saves the farm money—renting a helicopter is not cheap—it’s better for the workers’ health.

The SERF standards are part of what motivated Schaefer to buy a small drone to map the entire farm with photos and videos. (The standards require baseline mapping, though most farmers do it via Google.) While it may seem extreme to buy a drone to monitor Christmas tree health, Schaefer says the device has already paid off. “The quality of the pictures is so good … you can actually see sick trees” says Schaefer.

Noble Mountain alone harvests 600,000 trees each winter—most of which are sold at Home Depot and Walmart in the Northwest, California, Arizona, and Texas. And even though Schaefer hasn’t noticed increased sales since he got his SERF certification, using fewer pesticides has meant thank-you letters from satisfied customers. Many include a snapshot of themselves standing aside their bedecked tree. “Thank you for our beautiful Christmas tree. It is full and lush and still moist after three weeks!” wrote a happy customer last Christmas. “Thank you for being a great steward of the forest.”

03 November 2014

It's hard to keep up with all the money flowing into Oregon to defeat Measure 92, the state's GMO labeling measure. The day after I wrote this piece for Civil Eats, Dow, Monsanto, PepsiCo, and infant-formula company Mead Johnson gave an additional $2.37 million combined to the "No on 92" side's coffers, bringing their total to $19 million. This is by far the most expensive ballot measure in Oregon's history. Will money—and ads full of false claims—buy the "No on 92" side votes? We'll find out tomorrow.

Meanwhile, here's the piece I wrote for Civil Eats last week on the campaigns for and against the measure. I also deconstruct a few of the No on 92 side's claims. (After repeated calls and e-mails to the No side, I gave up trying to get their responses to the Yes on 92 ads.)

Oregon is awash in GMO labeling cash. Even before the seed giant DuPont Pioneer dumped $4.46 million to oppose mandatory GMO-labeling in Oregon late last week, Ballot Measure 92 had already been on record as the costliest in the state’s history.

As with California’s Proposition 37 and Washington’s Initiative 522 before it, Measure 92 has elicited a steady stream of donations from biotech and Big Food, including companies like Kraft, PepsiCo, CocaCola, and of course, Monsanto, which gave over $4 million against the Oregon measure.

Whether or not Oregon voters will opt to label GMO foods is yet to be seen, but the race is close. In an Oregon Public Broadcasting poll taken in October, 49 percent of voters supported Measure 92, while 44 percent opposed it, and 7 percent were undecided.

With exactly one week to go before election day, we wanted to take a look at how the dollars are being spent—and examine some of the claims made by both sides.

Unfortunately, the No on 92 side did not return our phone calls or e-mails, but, judging by the nine different ads running on Oregon television stations, it seems safe to say that they’ve spent a bundle on production and air time. A quick glance of the campaign’s financial records confirms this, showing a half-dozen large payments—many over $280,000—to Seattle-based marketing firm Amplified Strategies, the same marketing firm that Washington’s “No on I-522” campaign hired.

Below are a few of the claims the No on 92 campaign is making in their ads, with some background and explanation.

An oft-played No on 92 TV spot

1. “Special labels would not tell consumers which ingredients were GMOS.”

This is true, according to Kevin Glenn, the press secretary for the Yes on 92 campaign. Just as current nutrition labels don’t tell you which ingredients in your Oreos contain fats or sugars, the “genetically modified” label would merely tell you that your cookies contain genetically modified ingredients.

2. “The measure would require many products to be labeled genetically engineered even if they’re not.”

We can’t find any evidence to back up this claim. According to the language of the bill, foods that contain genetically engineered (GE) ingredients would be labeled.

3. “Thousands of products that contain GMOs would be exempt.”

This is somewhat true, according to Glenn. Fountain sodas and restaurant food are indeed exempt from the labeling law, but that’s because they don’t have labels to begin with. Measure 92 was written to conform with existing labeling guidelines. “Anything that is currently labeled would just get one more piece of information,” says Glenn.

Meat and dairy products that come from a genetically engineered animal would also have to be labeled. There are currently no foods from genetically engineered animals on the market, but if GE salmon is approved, it would be subject to the label. Meat and dairy from animals that eat GE feed wouldn’t need to be labeled, and neither would alcoholic beverages.

Food companies change their labels all the time without increasing the price of their products. Think of the profusion of “gluten-free” and “all-natural” language added to labels in recent years.

Craig Ostbo, a managing partner at Portland-based marketing and communications firm Koopman-Ostbo has worked on packaging changes for a range of Oregon companies including Kettle Chips, Bob’s Red Mill, Lochmead Farms, and Coconut Bliss. Last year, in an interview he gave to Oregon Business Magazine, Koopman-Ostbo said he’d be hard-pressed to find an economic onus to adding “contains GMO ingredients” to existing packaging.

Studies that have found a potential cost to consumers say it would be negligible. For example, a study recently released by Consumers Union and ECONorthwest estimates that mandatory labeling would cost consumers an average of $2.30 per year—less than a penny a day.

According to journalistMichael Lipsky, if food companies choose to reformulate their foods with non-GMO ingredients, prices will likely go up, but that scenario represents a whole additional set of variables.

There is no Federal labeling policy for GMOs, and an existing statewide labeling law would likely cause the FDA to re-examine their stance. (One did pass in Vermont earlier this year, but it’s currently caught up in a lawsuit). In fact, for some activists, the larger goal of statewide initiatives like Measure 92 is to put pressure on the Federal agency.

The two existing nationwide labeling systems that flash on the screen as Frketich talks—the Non-GMO Verified label and the Organic label–have some things in common with Measure 92, but they are not required. The Non-GMO Project has endorsed Measure 92, saying it believes that there’s space for both efforts to exist simultaneously. But Organic and non-GMO labeled foods still make up only a tiny fraction of the market, and in our current system, they’re also more expensive. “We feel that people—regardless of income level—should known what’s in their food,” says Glenn.

Meanwhile, the “Yes on 92” campaign has field offices in five cities around Oregon. And while it has also produced five TV spots, including the one below, most of the money it has received is funding grassroots efforts.

So far, the campaign has dispatched 750 volunteers to go door-to-door and phone bank from their homes. “We know we’ll get outspent by the opposition on the air, but we have so much grassroots support,” says Glenn. “We can talk to voters face to face.”

21 August 2014

Whenever we go to the farmers’ market together, my husband and I disagree about whether we should buy the pricey certified organic berries (my husband’s vote) or the less expensive ones grown without certification, but described by the farm as “sustainably produced.” If I look deep into a farmer’s eyes and she tells me that her fruit is “no-spray,” I’ll buy her berries, saving almost a buck a pint. (After all, the strawberries we grow in our own backyard are not certified organic, but I feel good about eating them.)

Lately I’ve been wondering–is my husband right, or is no-spray enough? And what about the assertion—sometimes made by conventional growers—that certified organic farms use pesticides too?

Toxicity: It’s All Relative

In most cases, even certified organic produce is not pesticide-free. But compared to most conventional produce, it can mean a big step in a less-toxic direction.

“The overarching concept is that natural pesticides are allowed and synthetics are prohibited, unless specifically allowed,” says Nate Lewis, a senior crop and livestock specialist at the Organic Trade Association. Furthermore, before they can use any approved pesticides, organic farmers must prove that they have a preventative plan in place—and that the plan is failing to prevent pests.

So while most organic farmers rely on plant-based pesticides such as Pyrethrum (from chrysanthemum flowers), extracts of the Benin tree, neem oil, or an extract of the Japanese knotweed root (an effective fungicide), they can occasionally use synthetic pesticides—with strict limitations.

There are roughly 40 synthetic substances farmers can use under U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) organic standards, says Lewis. Some of these are as innocuous as newspaper, which is allowed for use as mulch or as a “feedstock” for compost, or sticky traps, which provide a physical function (trapping insects) and then are removed from the field at the end of the year.

Others include zinc, copper, iron, manganese, molybdenum, selenium, and cobalt—essential plant micronutrients that cannot be used as insecticides or fungicides in most cases. Instead, they’re usually used as soil amendments. (A full list of the chemicals that are allowed under USDA organic standards is available at the Organic Materials Review Institute.)

About 26 of the 40 synthetic substances allowed in organic crop production are considered pesticides. But these have restrictions, too. For example, soap-based herbicides can only be used on right-of-ways and ditches, but can’t come into contact with organic food. Boric acid, which is a synthetic insecticide, can be used for pest control, but can’t come into contact with crops or soil. Similarly, ammonium carbonate can only be used as bait in insect traps.

This list is constantly under scrutiny and is therefore always being revised. For example, until recently, USDA organic standards made an exemption for the use of antibiotics—specifically tetracycline and streptomycin—to be sprayed on organic apple and pear orchards to prevent fire blight, which is highly contagious and can wipe out a whole orchard.

“It was only allowed at bloom time, which is the only time the orchard is susceptible, so there’s no residue on fruit,” explains Lewis. Nonetheless, the National Organics Standards Board (NOSB) let the exemptions for these antibiotics expire—starting October 2014.

But just because a chemical comes from a plant doesn’t make it safe. Rotenone, a toxic pesticide that’s derived from the roots of several tropical and sub-tropical plants such as the jicama, can no longer be used on crops in the U.S.—even conventionally farmed ones.

Last year, the NOSB recommended that it be put on the prohibited list by January 2016. But according to Miles McEvoy, Deputy Administrator of the National Organics Program at the USDA, the agency has more work to do before it can follow the NOSB’s recommendation. Until that happens, Rotenone can still be used on organic banana crops grown in tropical countries like Ecuador.

Despite these allowances, the pesticides and herbicides used on conventional farms are still significantly worse. Take organophosphates, for instance. This class of pesticide is used on conventional peaches, apples, grapes, green beans, and pears. According to Pesticide Action Network’s database, organophosphates are some of the most toxic insecticides used today. They have been shown to “adversely affect the human nervous system even at low levels of exposure” and hamper neurological development in children. The commonly used herbicides Glyphosate (Roundup) and Atrazine, have also both been shown to act as endocrine disruptors, meaning they interfere with the endocrine (or hormone system) in people and many animals.

Is Talking to Your Farmer Enough?

Oregon farmer Don Kruger, the owner of a 150-acre farm on Sauvie Island and two Portland farm stands, abhors labels. “I honestly would rather talk to the customers, if I could, or have them talk to my staff,” he says.

In the 14 years he’s owned his farm, he’s never sprayed a pesticide directly on any food crop. Yet, he says, “I have no interest in being straight-up organic. It gives me a little wiggle room to do things I might need to do.

Kruger uses a conventional fungicide on his raspberries. “The Tulameen is the best tasting raspberry—it’s fabulous. But the problem is, it’s prone to root rot,” he says. “I could grow another, inferior grade raspberry, but I don’t want to.” He sprays the plant just as it’s starting to leaf—before it blossoms or fruits.

He also uses an herbicide called Impact (a broad spectrum herbicide with topramezone as the active ingredient) on his corn. It kills the weeds—grass, pig weed, thistle, etc.—that would otherwise hinder the corn’s growth. “Otherwise you have to hand hoe it, and it’s really tough to do,” Kruger says. He sprays when the plant is two inches high and that’s it. “There’s no chance it’s on the corn,” he says.

Kruger believes he is offering a more affordable option, a middle-ground for folks who want local food that’s not conventional, but don’t mind that it’s not certified organic either. He is known in Portland for having the most affordable produce around and he prides himself on that.

But not everyone has the time for a 10 minute long conversation with their farmer about his growing practices and the nuances of what and when they spray. Furthermore, there are a lot of unregulated terms—like “no-spray” and “sustainably grown”—that get tossed around. And not everyone is as forthright about their practices as Kruger.

David Lively, vice president of sales and marketing at Organically Grown Company, the largest organic produce wholesaler in the Northwest, says farmers markets aren’t always as transparent as many customers believe. “There have been instances where growers selling produce at farmers’ markets have been busted for selling conventional as organic and product they bought off the market as their own.” Lively thinks—and many others in the organic movement agree—that organic certification offers the consumer extra assurance.

Other Reasons to Go Organic

At the end of the day, organic agriculture is about much more than reducing pesticide use. To grow food organically, farmers must build their soil, using techniques like composting, cover crops, and crop rotations rather than fossil fuel-intensive synthetic fertilizer. Doing so is a lot more work. But on an environmental level, that matters.

It’s true that organic certification requires a time commitment on the part of the grower. In addition to a 12-page application, as well as regular audits, organic farmers must document a great deal of what they do. The cost to farmers is also a factor, but it doesn’t have to be prohibitive. The USDA has a cost-share program that reimburses farmers 75 percent of the cost of certification, up to $750 per type of farming. Connie Carr, the certification director at Oregon Tilth, which inspects and certifies food producers for the USDA, says farmers take advantage of it.

“So if your certification costs $1,000”—the upper end of what a small farmer would pay per year—“you’ll get $750 back,” says Carr. Fortunately for farmers, this funding was renewed in the 2014 farm bill.

To help streamline the paperwork, which Carr says is no more arduous than applying for a loan or for college, the National Organic Program at the USDA introduced a “Sound & Sensible” initiative in 2013, which works with farmers to remove barriers to certification. Now, re-applying for certification each year is much easier (a farmer only has to submit changes) and some certifiers have launched online applications.

Will these changes lead to more certified organic farmers? It’s too soon to say. But one thing is clear: Consumer demand for organic food continues to grow. Organic food in the U.S. has been growing by an average of 13 percent per year over the past decade and reached $35 billion last year. Most farmers who take the plunge and go organic will have no problem selling their crops—and they’ll be able to charge a premium for them, too. And why shouldn’t they? Hoeing weeds by hand, cover-cropping, and keeping meticulous records is hard work. Maybe next time I’ll spring for those certified organic berries.

11 July 2014

In many ways, Shari Sirkin and Bryan Dickerson, the farmers at Dancing Roots Farm in Troutdale, Oregon, have made it. They run a popular Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program, their heirloom vegetables grace the menus at some of Portland’s finest restaurants—including Ned Ludd, Irving Street Kitchen, and Luce—and last year they won the prestigious Local Hero award from the environmental nonprofit Ecotrust. But despite all this, the farmers barely make ends meet. They drive a 1995 Toyota wagon, never go on vacation, and had to take out a loan to buy a used tractor. “We rarely eat out. Even though we want to support the restaurants that love us,” says Sirkin.

The odds are so stacked against small-scale farmers, it’s a wonder any of them can make a living at all. In fact, statistics show that most don’t: According to the latest agriculture census, 57 percent of America’s 2.1 million farms gross less than $10,000 a year, forcing them to rely on “off-farm” income.

But a new real estate trend might just help farmers pay the bills and allow them to go out for an occasional meal to boot.

Development Supported Agriculture (DSA) or “agrihoods,” are suburban housing developments built around working farms. Unlike traditional suburbs, DSAs make a commitment to preserving some rural land for agriculture—be it six or 100 acres. Though there’s no firm count on how many agrihoods exist in the U.S., a recent story in The New York Times listed a dozen. The most well-known DSAs range from the 16-acre Agritopia, outside Phoenix, Arizona, whose farm supplies a farm-to-table restaurant, to Serenbe, which has a 7-acre organic farm and CSA just south of Atlanta, Georgia. (Serenbe also has three restaurants that make use of the farm’s produce.) And Daron “Farmer D” Joffe, a consultant to many agrihoods, estimates that there are actually more like two dozen, with that number expected to rise exponentially over the next decade.

The benefit to residents is obvious: farm-fresh produce, pastoral views, and the chance to support a super-local food economy. But what’s in it for farmers?

First, they earn a salary–anywhere from $30,000-$100,000, depending on experience. The job also often comes with on-farm housing. Ashley Rodgers, 28, the current farm manager at Serenbe, gets free housing—as do her (paid) interns. This is a huge perk, because, as she points out, farmers do best when they can live on or very near to the farm. “Right now I’m running irrigation,” said Rodgers on the phone recently. “I’m going to have to come back in four hours so I can turn it off before I go to sleep.”

Unlike many sole proprietors, Rodgers doesn’t need to put aside a chunk of her income for the mortgage. Rodgers, who started the organic vegetable farm on a ranch called White Oaks Pastures, also gets profit-sharing at Serenbe. Roughly 50 of Serenbe’s 200 households subscribe to Rodger’s weekly CSA. She also sells fresh produce—lettuce, kholrabi, squash, cabbages, eggplants, tomatoes, you name it—at Serenbe’s Saturday farmers’ market, where residents set up an account and can shop without using cash.

“It’s very old-school,” says Rodgers. “There’s a small-town feel to it.” Though she thinks the farm will be lucky to break even this year, she hopes it will make a profit next year, which gives her incentive to stick around.

For Eric Calberg, farm manager of the educational programs at Prairie Crossing in Grayslake, Illinois, shared infrastructure is a big upside to working in an agrihood. Prairie Crossing devotes 100 acres to agriculture, but leases most of that land to Sandhill Family Farms and a coterie of beginning farmers via an incubator program. Five acres are designated for farming education and workforce development. It is here that Calberg runs a job training program for area high school students called Prairie Farm Corps.

“We all use the same tractor,” says Calberg. “And well, we’re sharing a lot of knowledge, too, helping each other out.”

The lack of affordable farmland is what steered 36-year-old Michael Snow towards a job as farm manager at Willowsford a 4,000-acre agrihood in Ashburn, Virginia. “Like a lot of young farmers, I was in a position where capital and land were the tough spots,” he says.

For now, Snow and his crew farm eight acres, but eventually—when they finish cover-cropping—they’ll have 25-30 tilled acres of veggies. The developers hope the farm will eventually be self-sustaining, but in the meantime they are paying several full-time farmers.

Jobs like these are rare, but they’re worth it, says Daron Joffe, who used to run a CSA on his own farm in Wisconsin. “An insane amount of work goes into farming and at the end of the day, there is just not that much money to it,” he adds. Joffe, who is now the ranch development director at the Leichtag Foundation in Encinitas, California, sold his farm and became the first farm manager at Serenbe. As he sees it, one of the biggest rewards of working at a DSA—at least for sociable farmers—is community-building.

“When you’re under the pressure of trying to make a living, you don’t have time to shoot the breeze with the neighbors. It’s like ‘You wanna talk? Pull some weeds and follow me.’ In a DSA environment, it’s not about pure survival and production, it’s about community. Taking that pressure off and adding community-building is very attractive,” he says.

Of course, even for farmers with paying jobs in agrihoods, the grass often looks greener on their own farm–even if it doesn’t exist yet. Ashley Rodgers finds her work at Serenbe all-consuming and gratifying for now, but adds: “Eventually it gets old. You just want that something to call your own.”

05 June 2014

Amy Kleinman had never had a job with lasting appeal. Most recently, Kleinman, 28 and living with Asperger syndrome, taught at a day care center. “I was having a lot of trouble there,” says Kleinman. “Not with the kids—I loved the babies. I was having problems with the adults.”

Then, three years ago, Kleinman got a job at Cleveland Crops, an urban farm and nonprofit dedicated to community development and food security.

"This is the first job I’ve had that keeps me getting up and wanting to go to work,” says Kleinman, who does everything from harvesting and washing vegetables to making deliveries to local restaurants. This season, she has been learning the basics of permaculture and worm composting.

She also helps New Product Development Supervisor, Nonni Casino, grow flowers and create swags and wreaths. “Someday Amy could work in a wonderful flower shop,” says Casino.

Cleveland Crops is just one of many farming projects in a city that has established itself as a mecca of urban farming. Not only does the rust belt city boast one of the largest contiguous urban farms in the country, but it has 20 farmers’ markets—all of which accept food stamps—and dozens of popular farm-to-table restaurants, many of which source ingredients from farms that are just blocks away. But what makes Cleveland Crops unique is that each of the 65 farmers who work there has a developmental disability of some sort—from autism and epilepsy to Down syndrome.

Founded four years ago by the Cuyahoga County Board of Developmental Disabilities and SAW, Inc., Cleveland Crops started with one acre in 2010 and will be farming a whopping 40 acres at a dozen locations around Cleveland by the end of this year. The farms—which include a 15,000 square-foot greenhouse and half a dozen hoop houses—provide pesticide-freeproduce for local restaurants, farmers’ markets, and a 300-member CSA. (They also sell produce to a popular grocery store in the area called Nature’s Bin.)

Traditionally, Clevelanders with developmental disabilities would have been trained for jobs in the manufacturing sector, but those jobs have been waning for decades, while urban farming is on the upswing. And in Cleveland, as in other parts of the country, demand for local, pesticide-free food is on the rise.

Cleveland chef/restaurateur Zach Bruell has worked with Cleveland Crops since it started four years ago and now uses the organization’s produce in six of his seven restaurants. “They’re real farmers, real agronomists,” says Bruell. He’s asked the crew to custom plant specialty vegetables like mâche, mico-greens, and pasilla bajio peppers.

Cleveland Crops is meant to be a temporary training venue. The goal, according to executive director Rich Hoban, is to train adults with developmental disabilities for jobs either in the urban farming sector, the food service industry, or—perhaps in Kleinman’s case—at a high-end flower shop.

“Our long-term objective is to get people permanent employment with other businesses,” says Hoban. For now—maybe because Cleveland Crops is the largest farming operation in the county and needs more staff than other area farming businesses—most trainees have stuck around. And that’s working out okay for most of them. Whereas some organizations that hire people with developmental disabilities get a federal waiver to pay below the minimum wage, Kleinman, like the other 64 trainees at Cleveland Crops, earn minimum wage ($7.95 an hour in Ohio).

Of course, the employees are also gaining transferable skills. Case in point: The organization has just opened a 5,000 square-foot Food Innovation Center—a commercial kitchen complete with three double convection ovens, a double walk-in fridge, and 11 commercial dehydrators. Trainees are already learning how to dehydrate fruits and kale (for kale chips) to be sold at farmers’ markets and CSA shares this summer. Soon they’ll learn how to make soups, barbecue sauce, salsa, and tomato sauce. They’re also co-packing for local food businesses like Twenty-4 Zen, a granola company.

For the workers, many of whom live in food deserts, there’s another benefit to working at Cleveland Crops: access to fresh, free food.

“I never used to eat tomatoes,” says Kleinman. Now, she says she regularly takes home veggies she didn’t eat fresh before she had this job. “It’s quality control,” she says joking. “I ate an asparagus stalk right out in the field the other day.”

Casino, who is a chef and food justice activist, offers employees misshapen produce and dehydrated foods like kale chips, which are tossed in an addictive topping of nutritional yeast, sea salt, lemon juice, and cashew bits. “This is not just about growing food,” she says. “This is about educating the people who really need this quality food.”

Now that the kitchen is open, Casino will start making soups and other healthy prepared foods, which she intends to tempt trainees with.

One of the organization’s biggest fans is city councilman Joe Cimperman. “They are at the forefront of the urban agriculture movement in Cleveland. But it’s not just that they’re taking over abandoned lots,” says Cimperman. “They’ve been an instigator of economic and community development.” Just one example: Before Cleveland Crops converted an abandoned school into the organization’s first farm, there were eight condemned or foreclosed homes surrounding the property. Three years later, those homes have all been purchased or rehabbed.

“Bricks were falling on the sidewalk and hitting people. It was absolute disinvestment,” recalls Cimperman of the school. “People used to drop off burned-up cars in the parking lot.” Today, that lot is covered with hoop houses filled with vegetable starts. “It’s beautiful,” says Cimperman. “They’re producing beautiful stuff!”

When Daron Joffe dropped out of college to become an organic farmer, his parents cheered him on. “Okay, Farmer D, let’s see where this goes,” his mom said. He apprenticed on several organic farms in the Midwest, picked up biodynamic farming from Hugh Lovel at the Union Agriculture Institute, and eventually bought a 175-acre farm in Wisconsin where he launched a successful community supported agriculture (CSA) program. After several stints in the nonprofit world, Joffe was asked to help design and run an organic farm at one of the first “agrihoods” in the country, Serenbe. A planned community built around an organic farm, Serenbe was the beginning of Joffe’s career as an “entre-manure.

Essentially anyone who is committed in some way to improving our food system and the health of our planet through action. You can be a citizen farmer from a classroom, a kitchen, a board room, or the mayor’s office. You left your own farm in Wisconsin because you wanted to raise awareness about biodynamic agriculture among the masses.

How did you go from being a farmer to a farmer-activist?

I loved the CSA model—the farm as a platform for education and community building. But I felt that I wasn’t going to be able to make a big enough impact on my farm. And so, my first inclination was “I need to be more urban.” So I bought a food truck in Madison—it was a farm-to-table food truck (the falafel had heirloom tomatoes and fresh arugula from my farm)—and started doing more urban gardening. That kind of reinforced for me: [Cities] are where change needs to happen. I thought, “I’m going to sell the farm, and come back to farming later in life. But I need to devote this energetic time of life in communities that need it.”

After working at a few nonprofits, you found yourself becoming what you call an “entre-manure.” How did that transformation come about?

I had had this idea for years, of bringing the farm into the Jewish summer camp environment. It would be a way to get better food into the cafeteria, get kids connected to the environment and farming. I presented this idea to a Jewish Community Center, near where I was going to school in Georgia, and I managed to raise the money and build this garden that’s still there. It was a huge success.

One day, this development person from the JCC asked me to apply for a social entrepreneurship grant called the Joshua Venture Fellowship. It’s a two-year fellowship and they pick eight people from around the country. I got it. They gave me a mentor who was this guru of nonprofits. I sat down and had coffee with him. I said, “Here’s what I do: I design and build these gardens, train somebody to run them, and then I check in on them and then I’m done.”

And he said, “That sounds like a business. Why are you doing it as a nonprofit?”

I didn’t even realize it, but for those few years, I had been building my consulting expertise. When I got the opportunity to work at Serenbe, just southwest of Atlanta, I’d been doing it already.

Was Serenbe the first of these so-called “agrihoods”—planned communities built around a farm?

It was one of the first. There was Prairie Crossing, and a few really small things had happened—co-housing communities with small farms. But Serenbe was the first that had clustered, hamlet-style villages around a farm. It was also the first on this scale.

Though you’ve worked as a consultant on private developments around the country, you’ve kept doing pro bono work, building farms and gardens for homeless shelters, youth prisons, and boys & girls clubs. Is that part of your company’s mission?

My bread and butter clients are big developments and high-end resorts and I take on as much of the discounted nonprofit stuff that I can afford. I’m in a position now, in my new role [as ranch development director] at the Leichtag Foundation, where that’s more my core.

You say in your book that “most biodynamic farming lessons are no more mystical than The Farmers’ Almanac.” Is there a misconception about biodynamic farming?

The other day, I got an e-mail from an agroecology professor I worked for at the University of Georgia-Athens, to whom I’d sent a copy of the book. He wrote a wonderful review of the book and at the end of it he said, “I only have one criticism: The biodynamic subtitle. Organic agriculture has been scientifically proven and accepted by scientists. But biodynamic remains in the realm of superstition. It may be proven someday, but why not just call it the ‘organic way to grow healthy food?’”

And I can appreciate that. But last night I had a drink with a good friend of mine, who said, “I love that you have biodynamic on the cover of this book!”

So it’s important to shine a light on this; it has been a big part of my experience with agriculture. It brings a spiritual approach that I relate to; organics doesn’t necessarily have that component. From the science perspective, sure, organic agriculture is more developed and scientifically proven. But I’ve seen biodynamics in practice and I’ve seen it work. The book is not all about biodynamics, but my goal was to demystify it a bit, and show that it can be effective.

The latest Agriculture Census data shows that over half of America’s farmers don’t call farming their primary occupation—presumably because they can’t make enough money. What financial advice would you give young farmers?

Most farmers already know this: It’s a labor-of-love career. The quality of life is the richness that you get. My advice is to [prioritize] good planning, good management, delegate, and engage your customers so that they can participate as much as possible. Building a good team is key. And having somebody in the family that has a stable job is always a good thing! Farming is fickle, and you never know. So, have another creative revenue stream that’s not as dependent on the crop harvest–whether that’s something you do collectively as a family or via events, cooking, consulting, or whatever.

Find opportunities that can relieve some of the financial burden or provide you with stability. If you can work within an existing infrastructure—whether that’s an incubator or an existing agricultural or land trust operation where you could share equipment.

The last thing I would say is do a CSA. It provides you with low-risk seed capital.

Are there other entre-manurial ways of making a living as a farmer?

There are more and more farm management and educator roles out there. Universities are starting farms, and so are developers, nonprofits—even cities. And there are some ways to save money with government programs—subsidizing organic certification, or putting land into conservation easement to reduce taxes.

Where can farmers learn more about these programs?

ATTRA (National Sustainable Agricultural Information Service) is a government resources site for alternative farming. And SARE (Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education) program, lists grants. The USDA is also a good resource, too. There’s a whole beginning farmer section that helps identify resources; it’s amazing!

You went to 13 banks before you found one that would secure you a loan. Any tips?

Ha! Part of it was having a good business plan. I said: Here’s how a CSA works, and here’s my financial plan, and here’s my experience. And part of it was my dad guaranteeing the loan!

Today there are beginning farmer loans through the FSA (Farm Service Agency at the USDA), but there weren’t at the time. A lot of the banks just looked at my crop list and their eyes rolled back. “You’re not doing corn and soybeans?” They just did not understand it. There is a lot more support from social venture type funds now. Slow Money, for example. And lot of starter farms are being funded by angels–wealthy people who are passionate about this.

Aside from donating extra produce to the local food bank, what can citizen farmers do to get more healthy food into low-income neighborhoods?

Encourage vegetable gardening, especially in neighborhoods that lack access and resources. Some CSAs offer programs where you can sponsor a CSA share for a family in need. Advocate to local government, business, and community leaders about how important it is to get fresh food into low-income communities, schools, and shelters and support local sustainable agriculture.

Why did you decide to write a book?

I’ve always had a really hard time explaining what I do. So the book has been a good way to express my philosophy, my motivation, and my goals. My driving passion has always been to raise awareness and make change on a big scale; a book seemed like a great way to do that.

18 March 2014

This story first appeared on CivilEats last Friday. That very day, Michelle Obama announced a new phase of Let's Move! that will encourage American families to get into the kitchen and cook together—! Here are some of the First Lady's remarks, which hint at what she and nutrition policy tsar Sam Kass have in mind for the near future:

So the benefits of cooking couldn’t be more clear. The question is how do we help families start cooking again, even if it’s just one or two meals a week? Can we work with supermarkets to do more to distribute recipes on how to cook, and do demonstrations? Can we develop the home-ec class of the future that will give kids—both girls and boys—the basic skills they need to feed themselves on a budget? Can we inspire chefs to offer affordable cooking classes in their restaurants?

I couldn't be more excited—and await concrete details of their initiatives in the coming weeks and months!

My CivilEats story starts below the Pure Food Kids video.

Two months ago, Seattle-area 4th grader Michael Kenny came home from school with a burning desire to make vegetarian chili. His mom Liz nearly fell out of her seat. She knew her son was not fond of peppers—and he’d never shown much interest in cooking before. “They sent all the students home with a recipe, and when he came home he wanted to make it right away,” Liz says. “And most of the ingredients were vegetables!”

Michael and his classmates at Island Park Elementary on Washington’s Mercer Island had a chance to participate in a workshop called Pure Food Kids, run by the Beecher’s Cheese Flagship Foundation. Though it’s a one-time, two-and-a-half hour lesson, Pure Food Kids packs a lot in. The instructors, hired by the nonprofit arm of a successful Seattle artisan cheese company, ask the students to be “food detectives.” They show them how companies use marketing techniques to make their products look healthier than they actually are; how to carefully inspect nutrition statements and ingredient lists; and how to spot unhealthy additives like dyes and preservatives. They also give kids a quick cooking lesson, showing them how to make a simple chili. Most kids enjoy this part the most. “I liked chopping the peppers,” says Michael, who was in the “pepper group.”

Research shows that engaging kids with growing, choosing, and cooking food increases the likelihood they will eat a healthy diet. And that’s why classes like Pure Food Kids are having an impact.

Beecher’s Flagship Foundation executive director Kristin Hyde recently sent a survey to parents of middle school students to find out what information from the workshop their students retain from the 4th grade. A full 79 percent said their kids still read nutrition labels and ingredient lists before buying a product and 60 percent said their kids express an interest in avoiding processed foods as a result of the workshop. The workshop—which was launched in 2005—has been taught in 70 percent of Seattle’s elementary schools and is in about half of the school districts surrounding Seattle—reaching a combined 10,000 students a year.

“I have never seen another nutrition education program that has had this far of a reach,” says Hyde, who has worked on school food reform for over a decade. The program recently expanded to four elementary schools in New York City, where Beecher’s Cheese has a second store. Hyde’s goal is to have the workshop in 10 to 20 New York City schools by this fall.

Beecher’s Cheese owner Kurt Dammeier (the man behind Sugar Mountain, a portfolio of restaurants and food companies that includes Beecher’s) had an epiphany 20 years ago when he discovered he had an allergy to MSG. “MSG was the tip of the iceberg, really,” Dammeier says. “That’s when I realized that our industrial food system might be delivering food that’s not good for me.” He started a foundation, funded by 1 percent of sales from each Sugar Mountain company, to get this message out via kids.

Seattle-area students are gobbling up these nutrition facts and marketing tricks. Interviewed for a Pure Food Kids video, a handful of 4th and 5th graders remember what they picked up during the workshop. “I learned that if a word rhymes with gross, it’s a sugar,” says one girl. “I learned that trans fats are really, really, really, really bad for you,” says another. But most importantly, they’re also changing their habits. “I used to eat a little bit of candy when I got home, but now I eat fruits and vegetables,” says a girl with pigtails. A boy with curly red hair says the workshop inspired him to try fruits he thought he wouldn’t like.

Programs like Pure Food Kids are becoming more common across the country. FoodFight, a New York City nonprofit, now in 40 schools, teaches students media literacy, nutrition education, and basic cooking skills. National programs like FoodCorps, deploy young service members into low-income public schools around the country to teach kids about healthy food, instruct them in gardening and cooking, and help school food directors get more local food into schools (including, sometimes, the very produce kids grow themselves). And countless individual teachers bring their own passion for gardening and cooking into public schools.

But these programs—while an amazing start—are piecemeal attempts to reverse decades of food illiteracy and lack of basic cooking skills amongst American kids. Every time she leads one of these workshops, Hyde sees a dire need for basic nutrition education. “Kids don’t even know what fiber or protein is. They don’t know what vitamins are. They don’t know how to read an ingredient list. They don’t know anything!”

In recent weeks, Michelle Obama has shown how fierce she can be when it comes to leading on policy issues related to her Let’s Move! campaign. Last week, she announced new federal standards on junk food marketing in public schools as well as proposed changes to the nutrition facts labels, requiring added sugar to be listed for the first time, and calories-per-serving to be listed in a larger font.

But if she’s really serious about ending childhood obesity within a generation, she might consider supporting a home economics program for the 21st century. It’s an idea Dammeier and Hyde can get behind. “You can’t just plop down a salad bar,” says Hyde. “You need to inspire kids to cook—not just lecture them about labels.”

10 December 2013

Last week, Civil Eats published my story on restaurants that provide health insurance to all employees. My focus was on independent restaurants like Biwa and Xico that are boldly asking customers to kick in a little extra so that all workers—even bussers and dishwashers—can receive affordable health insurance. Response to the story was mixed: some local food businesses such as Grand Central Bakery pointed out that they, like Burgerville, have been offering health insurance (and paid sick days) to their employees for years. (My bad for not knowing this!) Local café Zell's apparently offers low-cost, high-quality health insurance, too. (Or so says one former employee, who notes that's why the kitchen staff hasn't changed for over a decade.) But most of the feedback I got was positive. Most restaurant-goers don't mind paying a bit extra if it ensures workers will have access to affordable health care.

Here's the story in its entirety:

Restaurant workers haul ass to provide us seasonal, delicious, safely-prepared food. And yet their meager wages—the typical restaurant worker makes $15,000 a year—are barely enough to pay their rent and groceries, let alone health insurance premiums. (This is especially true in the case of bussers and dishwashers, some of the least glamorous and lowest paying jobs in the restaurant industry.)

As members of the food movement, we seek out restaurants that serve fresh, local, organic ingredients, yet most of us don’t even know whether the workers who prepare and serve our food (and wash our dishes) get health insurance or paid sick leave.

That’s not the case at Biwa, a homestyle Japanese restaurant in Portland, Oregon. A few months ago, owner Gabe Rosen and his wife and business partner Kina Voelz took a gamble and began adding a five percent "Health & Wellness" charge to customers' bills to pay for their employees' health insurance. Whatever is left over goes into a fund for quarterly bonuses for Biwa's cooks and dishwashers.

The charge is very transparent—an explanation appears on the menu and again on your bill—and so far diners have been incredibly enthusiastic about paying it. “People like it,” says general manager Ed Ross in this short video (see above), noting that every night diners send back their bill with “awesome” and “this is great!” scribbled in the margins. “I think that people understand that it’s an issue,” says Ross.

Biwa covers every employee at the restaurant—from waiters to dishwashers—as long as they work 16.5 hours a week. The company pays 100 percent of the premium for the high-deductible plan. (If workers want a more comprehensive, lower deductible plan, they can get it, but have to chip in for the higher monthly premium.)

Rosen and Voelz have actually been paying their workers’ health insurance for a few years and they’ve offered one week of paid vacation per year to cooks and dishwashers since they opened in 2007. But the couple realized this summer—as premiums continued to soar—that they wouldn’t be able to do so for much longer unless they came up with a creative solution, fast.

They considered raising prices across the board. “But then we realized we could raise prices as a single line item and take this kind of boring business issue—that’s actually very important—and make the guests part of it,” says Rosen. The staff was initially concerned that the surcharge would mean stingier tips, but after a moment of head-scratching, according to Rosen, they bought into the idea. Rosen says that other than a handful of negative comments in online forums, customer feedback has been amazingly positive. “Tips have actually gone up!” he says.

At another Portland restaurant, a regional Mexican spot called Xico, the margaritas pay for health care. Or at least that’s what it says on the menu. Under the “Classic” Xico Margarita ($9)—made with Lunazul tequila, fresh lime juice, and triple sec—it reads: “Xico margaritas pay for full health care for our staff.”

But that’s not entirely accurate. Owner Liz Davis says she put this on the menu because the gross sales of margaritas matched what the company was already spending on health insurance. “We wanted to make it known that we were fully covering our employees,” says Davis.

Though employees have to work three months before they can get on Xico’s group plan, the company covers the entire monthly premium of $240 per month, no matter how few hours the employee works. It’s a fairly comprehensive plan from HMO Kaiser Permanente with $25 co-pays and low-cost prescriptions (generic drugs cost just $10). As with Biwa diners, Xico regulars seem more than happy to pitch in. “People get really excited about it and order more margaritas,” Davis says, laughing.

The average progressive Portlander may be happy to pay a little extra (or double down on their margaritas) to ensure restaurant workers get adequate medical care. But Saru Jayaraman, author of the exposé, “Behind the Kitchen Door,” doesn’t think consumers should be responsible for kitchen workers’ health insurance.

“Don’t get me wrong, I definitely applaud trying to provide health care and benefits,” says Jayaraman, who is the co-founder and director of the Restaurant Opportunities Centers United (ROC), an organization committed to improving the wages and working conditions of the nation’s 10 million restaurant workers. “But this is an industry-wide problem. Restaurants need to be providing benefits—it’s not the responsibility of the customer to do that.”

When the Healthy San Francisco law passed in 2008, requiring San Francisco businesses with 20 employees or more to offer health insurance, many restaurants added a surcharge to customers’ bills. Reactions were all over the map from supportive (“Too many of my friends and family are without health care”) to outrage that diners were being taxed. “Incorporate all these expenses into menu prices,” wrote San Francisco Chronicle restaurant critic Michael Bauer. (A legal challenge against the program, which was filed by the Golden Gate Restaurant Association in 2006, was denied a hearing by the U.S. Supreme Court on June 29, 2010, legally clearing the program for continued existence for the foreseeable future.)

Then there's the issue of oversight. In May, 19 restaurants were accused of not using that extra money exlusively for workers' health insurance.

Jayaraman says plenty of restaurants manage to provide health insurance to their workers without passing the cost on to diners. “They’ve worked it into the efficiencies of the restaurant,” she says. “They say it actually reduces costs because it reduces turnover and increases productivity.”

Among the examples she gives are Zingerman’s Deli in Ann Arbor, Michigan, which offers subsidized health insurance for employees who work 30 hours a week (as long as they’ve been on staff for three months), “thrive-able” wages, paid time off, and matched 401(k) contributions.

Locavore fast food chain Burgerville—which has 39 restaurants in Washington and Oregon—has been offering workers comprehensive, affordable health care since 2006. To be eligible, employees must work 25 hours a week but once they do they only pay $30 a month. Health insurance kicks in after six months of employment.

“Chief cultural officer” Jack Graves attributes the low staff turnover at Burgerville—50 percent versus an industry average of over 100 percent—to this important benefit. “Offering health insurance got a lot of people insurance who had never had it before in their lives. It made people proud of where they’re working, proud that they can take care of their families in a manner that’s respectful,” he says.

Xico owner Liz Davis built the cost of health insurance into her business plan from the beginning, too, but she says the rising cost of health insurance—and the fact that she covers the full premium for even part-time employees after only three months on staff—means she may have to do something enterprising, like Biwa, to keep offering this benefit.

Lucky for her, Portland eaters are no longer satisfied with merely knowing the provenance of the chicken on the menu and whether it was humanely treated. They also want assurance that the restaurants they eat at treat their employees ethically—even if that means ordering another margarita.

Restaurant workers haul ass to provide us seasonal, delicious, safely-prepared food. And yet their meager wages—the typical restaurant worker makes $15,000 a year—are barely enough to pay their rent and groceries, let alone health insurance premiums. (This is especially true in the case of bussers and dishwashers, some of the least glamorous and lowest paying jobs in the restaurant industry.)

As members of the food movement, we seek out restaurants that serve fresh, local, organic ingredients, yet most of us don’t even know whether the workers who prepare and serve our food (and wash our dishes) get health insurance or paid sick leave.

That’s not the case at Biwa, a homestyle Japanese restaurant in Portland, Oregon. A few months ago, owner Gabe Rosen and his wife and business partner Kina Voelz took a gamble and began adding a five percent “Health & Wellness” charge to customers’ bills to pay for their employees’ health insurance. Whatever is left over goes into a fund for quarterly bonuses for Biwa’s cooks and dishwashers.

The charge is very transparent—an explanation appears on the menu and again on your bill—and so far diners have been incredibly enthusiastic about paying it. “People like it,” says general manager Ed Ross in this short video, noting that every night diners send back their bill with “awesome” and “this is great!” scribbled in the margins. “I think that people understand that it’s an issue,” says Ross.

Biwa covers every employee at the restaurant—from waiters to dishwashers—as long as they work 16.5 hours a week. The company pays 100 percent of the premium for the high-deductible plan. (If workers want a more comprehensive, lower deductible plan, they can get it, but have to chip in for the higher monthly premium.)

Rosen and Voelz have actually been paying their workers’ health insurance for a few years and they’ve offered one week of paid vacation per year to cooks and dishwashers since they opened in 2007. But the couple realized this summer—as premiums continued to soar—that they wouldn’t be able to do so for much longer unless they came up with a creative solution, fast.

They considered raising prices across the board. “But then we realized we could raise prices as a single line item and take this kind of boring business issue—that’s actually very important—and make the guests part of it,” says Rosen. The staff was initially concerned that the surcharge would mean stingier tips, but after a moment of head-scratching, according to Rosen, they bought into the idea. Rosen says that other than a handful of negative comments in online forums, customer feedback has been amazingly positive. “Tips have actually gone up!” he says.

At another Portland restaurant, a regional Mexican spot called Xico, the margaritas pay for health care. Or at least that’s what it says on the menu. Under the “Classic” Xico Margarita ($9)—made with Lunazul tequila, fresh lime juice, and triple sec—it reads: “Xico margaritas pay for full health care for our staff.”

But that’s not entirely accurate. Owner Liz Davis says she put this on the menu because the gross sales of margaritas matched what the company was already spending on health insurance. “We wanted to make it known that we were fully covering our employees,” says Davis.

Though employees have to work three months before they can get on Xico’s group plan, the company covers the entire monthly premium of $240 per month, no matter how few hours the employee works. It’s a fairly comprehensive plan from HMO Kaiser Permanente with $25 co-pays and low-cost prescriptions (generic drugs cost just $10). As with Biwa diners, Xico regulars seem more than happy to pitch in. “People get really excited about it and order more margaritas,” Davis says, laughing.

The average progressive Portlander may be happy to pay a little extra (or double down on their margaritas) to ensure restaurant workers get adequate medical care. But Saru Jayaraman, author of the exposé, “Behind the Kitchen Door,” doesn’t think consumers should be responsible for kitchen workers’ health insurance.

“Don’t get me wrong, I definitely applaud trying to provide health care and benefits,” says Jayaraman, who is the co-founder and director of the Restaurant Opportunities Centers United (ROC), an organization committed to improving the wages and working conditions of the nation’s 10 million restaurant workers. “But this is an industry-wide problem. Restaurants need to be providing benefits—it’s not the responsibility of the customer to do that.”

Then there’s the issue of trust. When the Healthy San Francisco law passed in 2008, requiring businesses there with 20 employees or more to offer health insurance, many restaurants added a surcharge to customers’ bills. Reactions were all over the map from supportive–“Too many of my friends and family are without health care”–to outrage that diners were being taxed, with San Francisco Chronicle restaurant critic Michael Bauer writing: “Incorporate all these expenses into menu prices.”

(A legal challenge against the program, which was filed by the Golden Gate Restaurant Association in 2006, was denied a hearing by the U.S. Supreme Court on June 29, 2010, legally clearing the program for continued existence for the foreseeable future.)

Then there’s the issue of oversight: In May, 19 restaurants were accused of not using that extra money exclusively for workers’ health insurance.

Jayaraman says plenty of restaurants manage to provide health insurance to their workers without passing the cost on to diners. “They’ve worked it into the efficiencies of the restaurant,” she says. “They say it actually reduces costs because it reduces turnover and increases productivity.”

Among the examples she gives are Zingerman’s Deli in Ann Arbor, Michigan, which offers subsidized health insurance for employees who work 30 hours a week (as long as they’ve been on staff for three months), “thrive-able” wages, paid time off, and matched 401(k) contributions.

Russell Street Deli in Detroit’s Eastern Market is another model employer. The deli offers living wages, health insurance, and an IRA program. ROC’s 2012 report Taking the High Road: a How-to Guide for Successful Restaurant Employers singles out a few other businesses that provide some form of health insurance for workers: Tom Colicchio’s Craft restaurant group in New York, Busboys & Poets in D.C., and Avalon International Breads in Detroit. “But many, many others provide health insurance; many provide full coverage, but the quality of the insurance varies,” notes Jayaraman.

Locavore fast food chain Burgerville—which has 39 restaurants in Washington and Oregon—has been offering workers comprehensive, affordable health care since 2006. To be eligible, employees must work 25 hours a week but once they do they only pay $30 a month. Health insurance kicks in after six months of employment.

“Chief cultural officer” Jack Graves attributes the low staff turnover at Burgerville—50 percent versus an industry average of over 100 percent—to this important benefit. “Offering health insurance got a lot of people insurance who had never had it before in their lives. It made people proud of where they’re working, proud that they can take care of their families in a manner that’s respectful,” he says.

Xico owner Liz Davis built the cost of health insurance into her business plan from the beginning, too, but she says the rising cost of health insurance—and the fact that she covers the full premium for even part-time employees after only three months on staff—means she may have to do something enterprising, like Biwa, to keep offering this benefit.

- See more at: http://civileats.com/2013/12/03/health-on-the-menu-in-the-pacific-northwest/#sthash.t1P5XMYg.dpuf

workers haul ass to provide us seasonal, delicious, safely-prepared food. And yet their meager wages—the typical restaurant worker makes $15,000 a year—are barely enough to pay their rent and groceries, let alone health insurance premiums. (This is especially true in the case of bussers and dishwashers, some of the least glamorous and lowest paying jobs in the restaurant industry.)

As members of the food movement, we seek out restaurants that serve fresh, local, organic ingredients, yet most of us don’t even know whether the workers who prepare and serve our food (and wash our dishes) get health insurance or paid sick leave.

That’s not the case at Biwa, a homestyle Japanese restaurant in Portland, Oregon. A few months ago, owner Gabe Rosen and his wife and business partner Kina Voelz took a gamble and began adding a five percent “Health & Wellness” charge to customers’ bills to pay for their employees’ health insurance. Whatever is left over goes into a fund for quarterly bonuses for Biwa’s cooks and dishwashers.

The charge is very transparent—an explanation appears on the menu and again on your bill—and so far diners have been incredibly enthusiastic about paying it. “People like it,” says general manager Ed Ross in this short video, noting that every night diners send back their bill with “awesome” and “this is great!” scribbled in the margins. “I think that people understand that it’s an issue,” says Ross.

Biwa covers every employee at the restaurant—from waiters to dishwashers—as long as they work 16.5 hours a week. The company pays 100 percent of the premium for the high-deductible plan. (If workers want a more comprehensive, lower deductible plan, they can get it, but have to chip in for the higher monthly premium.)

Rosen and Voelz have actually been paying their workers’ health insurance for a few years and they’ve offered one week of paid vacation per year to cooks and dishwashers since they opened in 2007. But the couple realized this summer—as premiums continued to soar—that they wouldn’t be able to do so for much longer unless they came up with a creative solution, fast.

They considered raising prices across the board. “But then we realized we could raise prices as a single line item and take this kind of boring business issue—that’s actually very important—and make the guests part of it,” says Rosen. The staff was initially concerned that the surcharge would mean stingier tips, but after a moment of head-scratching, according to Rosen, they bought into the idea. Rosen says that other than a handful of negative comments in online forums, customer feedback has been amazingly positive. “Tips have actually gone up!” he says.

At another Portland restaurant, a regional Mexican spot called Xico, the margaritas pay for health care. Or at least that’s what it says on the menu. Under the “Classic” Xico Margarita ($9)—made with Lunazul tequila, fresh lime juice, and triple sec—it reads: “Xico margaritas pay for full health care for our staff.”

But that’s not entirely accurate. Owner Liz Davis says she put this on the menu because the gross sales of margaritas matched what the company was already spending on health insurance. “We wanted to make it known that we were fully covering our employees,” says Davis.

Though employees have to work three months before they can get on Xico’s group plan, the company covers the entire monthly premium of $240 per month, no matter how few hours the employee works. It’s a fairly comprehensive plan from HMO Kaiser Permanente with $25 co-pays and low-cost prescriptions (generic drugs cost just $10). As with Biwa diners, Xico regulars seem more than happy to pitch in. “People get really excited about it and order more margaritas,” Davis says, laughing.

The average progressive Portlander may be happy to pay a little extra (or double down on their margaritas) to ensure restaurant workers get adequate medical care. But Saru Jayaraman, author of the exposé, “Behind the Kitchen Door,” doesn’t think consumers should be responsible for kitchen workers’ health insurance.

“Don’t get me wrong, I definitely applaud trying to provide health care and benefits,” says Jayaraman, who is the co-founder and director of the Restaurant Opportunities Centers United (ROC), an organization committed to improving the wages and working conditions of the nation’s 10 million restaurant workers. “But this is an industry-wide problem. Restaurants need to be providing benefits—it’s not the responsibility of the customer to do that.”

Then there’s the issue of trust. When the Healthy San Francisco law passed in 2008, requiring businesses there with 20 employees or more to offer health insurance, many restaurants added a surcharge to customers’ bills. Reactions were all over the map from supportive–“Too many of my friends and family are without health care”–to outrage that diners were being taxed, with San Francisco Chronicle restaurant critic Michael Bauer writing: “Incorporate all these expenses into menu prices.”

(A legal challenge against the program, which was filed by the Golden Gate Restaurant Association in 2006, was denied a hearing by the U.S. Supreme Court on June 29, 2010, legally clearing the program for continued existence for the foreseeable future.)

Then there’s the issue of oversight: In May, 19 restaurants were accused of not using that extra money exclusively for workers’ health insurance.

Jayaraman says plenty of restaurants manage to provide health insurance to their workers without passing the cost on to diners. “They’ve worked it into the efficiencies of the restaurant,” she says. “They say it actually reduces costs because it reduces turnover and increases productivity.”

Among the examples she gives are Zingerman’s Deli in Ann Arbor, Michigan, which offers subsidized health insurance for employees who work 30 hours a week (as long as they’ve been on staff for three months), “thrive-able” wages, paid time off, and matched 401(k) contributions.

Russell Street Deli in Detroit’s Eastern Market is another model employer. The deli offers living wages, health insurance, and an IRA program. ROC’s 2012 report Taking the High Road: a How-to Guide for Successful Restaurant Employers singles out a few other businesses that provide some form of health insurance for workers: Tom Colicchio’s Craft restaurant group in New York, Busboys & Poets in D.C., and Avalon International Breads in Detroit. “But many, many others provide health insurance; many provide full coverage, but the quality of the insurance varies,” notes Jayaraman.

Locavore fast food chain Burgerville—which has 39 restaurants in Washington and Oregon—has been offering workers comprehensive, affordable health care since 2006. To be eligible, employees must work 25 hours a week but once they do they only pay $30 a month. Health insurance kicks in after six months of employment.

“Chief cultural officer” Jack Graves attributes the low staff turnover at Burgerville—50 percent versus an industry average of over 100 percent—to this important benefit. “Offering health insurance got a lot of people insurance who had never had it before in their lives. It made people proud of where they’re working, proud that they can take care of their families in a manner that’s respectful,” he says.

Xico owner Liz Davis built the cost of health insurance into her business plan from the beginning, too, but she says the rising cost of health insurance—and the fact that she covers the full premium for even part-time employees after only three months on staff—means she may have to do something enterprising, like Biwa, to keep offering this benefit.

Lucky for her, Portland eaters are no longer satisfied with merely knowing the provenance of the chicken on the menu and whether it was humanely treated. They also want assurance that the restaurants they eat at treat their employees ethically—even if that means ordering another margarita.

- See more at: http://civileats.com/2013/12/03/health-on-the-menu-in-the-pacific-northwest/#sthash.t1P5XMYg.dpuf

Restaurant workers haul ass to provide us seasonal, delicious, safely-prepared food. And yet their meager wages—the typical restaurant worker makes $15,000 a year—are barely enough to pay their rent and groceries, let alone health insurance premiums. (This is especially true in the case of bussers and dishwashers, some of the least glamorous and lowest paying jobs in the restaurant industry.)

As members of the food movement, we seek out restaurants that serve fresh, local, organic ingredients, yet most of us don’t even know whether the workers who prepare and serve our food (and wash our dishes) get health insurance or paid sick leave.

That’s not the case at Biwa, a homestyle Japanese restaurant in Portland, Oregon. A few months ago, owner Gabe Rosen and his wife and business partner Kina Voelz took a gamble and began adding a five percent “Health & Wellness” charge to customers’ bills to pay for their employees’ health insurance. Whatever is left over goes into a fund for quarterly bonuses for Biwa’s cooks and dishwashers.

The charge is very transparent—an explanation appears on the menu and again on your bill—and so far diners have been incredibly enthusiastic about paying it. “People like it,” says general manager Ed Ross in this short video, noting that every night diners send back their bill with “awesome” and “this is great!” scribbled in the margins. “I think that people understand that it’s an issue,” says Ross.

Biwa covers every employee at the restaurant—from waiters to dishwashers—as long as they work 16.5 hours a week. The company pays 100 percent of the premium for the high-deductible plan. (If workers want a more comprehensive, lower deductible plan, they can get it, but have to chip in for the higher monthly premium.)

Rosen and Voelz have actually been paying their workers’ health insurance for a few years and they’ve offered one week of paid vacation per year to cooks and dishwashers since they opened in 2007. But the couple realized this summer—as premiums continued to soar—that they wouldn’t be able to do so for much longer unless they came up with a creative solution, fast.

They considered raising prices across the board. “But then we realized we could raise prices as a single line item and take this kind of boring business issue—that’s actually very important—and make the guests part of it,” says Rosen. The staff was initially concerned that the surcharge would mean stingier tips, but after a moment of head-scratching, according to Rosen, they bought into the idea. Rosen says that other than a handful of negative comments in online forums, customer feedback has been amazingly positive. “Tips have actually gone up!” he says.

At another Portland restaurant, a regional Mexican spot called Xico, the margaritas pay for health care. Or at least that’s what it says on the menu. Under the “Classic” Xico Margarita ($9)—made with Lunazul tequila, fresh lime juice, and triple sec—it reads: “Xico margaritas pay for full health care for our staff.”

But that’s not entirely accurate. Owner Liz Davis says she put this on the menu because the gross sales of margaritas matched what the company was already spending on health insurance. “We wanted to make it known that we were fully covering our employees,” says Davis.

Though employees have to work three months before they can get on Xico’s group plan, the company covers the entire monthly premium of $240 per month, no matter how few hours the employee works. It’s a fairly comprehensive plan from HMO Kaiser Permanente with $25 co-pays and low-cost prescriptions (generic drugs cost just $10). As with Biwa diners, Xico regulars seem more than happy to pitch in. “People get really excited about it and order more margaritas,” Davis says, laughing.

The average progressive Portlander may be happy to pay a little extra (or double down on their margaritas) to ensure restaurant workers get adequate medical care. But Saru Jayaraman, author of the exposé, “Behind the Kitchen Door,” doesn’t think consumers should be responsible for kitchen workers’ health insurance.

“Don’t get me wrong, I definitely applaud trying to provide health care and benefits,” says Jayaraman, who is the co-founder and director of the Restaurant Opportunities Centers United (ROC), an organization committed to improving the wages and working conditions of the nation’s 10 million restaurant workers. “But this is an industry-wide problem. Restaurants need to be providing benefits—it’s not the responsibility of the customer to do that.”

Then there’s the issue of trust. When the Healthy San Francisco law passed in 2008, requiring businesses there with 20 employees or more to offer health insurance, many restaurants added a surcharge to customers’ bills. Reactions were all over the map from supportive–“Too many of my friends and family are without health care”–to outrage that diners were being taxed, with San Francisco Chronicle restaurant critic Michael Bauer writing: “Incorporate all these expenses into menu prices.”

(A legal challenge against the program, which was filed by the Golden Gate Restaurant Association in 2006, was denied a hearing by the U.S. Supreme Court on June 29, 2010, legally clearing the program for continued existence for the foreseeable future.)

Then there’s the issue of oversight: In May, 19 restaurants were accused of not using that extra money exclusively for workers’ health insurance.

Jayaraman says plenty of restaurants manage to provide health insurance to their workers without passing the cost on to diners. “They’ve worked it into the efficiencies of the restaurant,” she says. “They say it actually reduces costs because it reduces turnover and increases productivity.”

Among the examples she gives are Zingerman’s Deli in Ann Arbor, Michigan, which offers subsidized health insurance for employees who work 30 hours a week (as long as they’ve been on staff for three months), “thrive-able” wages, paid time off, and matched 401(k) contributions.

Russell Street Deli in Detroit’s Eastern Market is another model employer. The deli offers living wages, health insurance, and an IRA program. ROC’s 2012 report Taking the High Road: a How-to Guide for Successful Restaurant Employers singles out a few other businesses that provide some form of health insurance for workers: Tom Colicchio’s Craft restaurant group in New York, Busboys & Poets in D.C., and Avalon International Breads in Detroit. “But many, many others provide health insurance; many provide full coverage, but the quality of the insurance varies,” notes Jayaraman.

Locavore fast food chain Burgerville—which has 39 restaurants in Washington and Oregon—has been offering workers comprehensive, affordable health care since 2006. To be eligible, employees must work 25 hours a week but once they do they only pay $30 a month. Health insurance kicks in after six months of employment.

“Chief cultural officer” Jack Graves attributes the low staff turnover at Burgerville—50 percent versus an industry average of over 100 percent—to this important benefit. “Offering health insurance got a lot of people insurance who had never had it before in their lives. It made people proud of where they’re working, proud that they can take care of their families in a manner that’s respectful,” he says.

Xico owner Liz Davis built the cost of health insurance into her business plan from the beginning, too, but she says the rising cost of health insurance—and the fact that she covers the full premium for even part-time employees after only three months on staff—means she may have to do something enterprising, like Biwa, to keep offering this benefit.

Lucky for her, Portland eaters are no longer satisfied with merely knowing the provenance of the chicken on the menu and whether it was humanely treated. They also want assurance that the restaurants they eat at treat their employees ethically—even if that means ordering another margarita.

- See more at: http://civileats.com/2013/12/03/health-on-the-menu-in-the-pacific-northwest/#sthash.t1P5XMYg.dpuf

Restaurant workers haul ass to provide us seasonal, delicious, safely-prepared food. And yet their meager wages—the typical restaurant worker makes $15,000 a year—are barely enough to pay their rent and groceries, let alone health insurance premiums. (This is especially true in the case of bussers and dishwashers, some of the least glamorous and lowest paying jobs in the restaurant industry.)

As members of the food movement, we seek out restaurants that serve fresh, local, organic ingredients, yet most of us don’t even know whether the workers who prepare and serve our food (and wash our dishes) get health insurance or paid sick leave.

That’s not the case at Biwa, a homestyle Japanese restaurant in Portland, Oregon. A few months ago, owner Gabe Rosen and his wife and business partner Kina Voelz took a gamble and began adding a five percent “Health & Wellness” charge to customers’ bills to pay for their employees’ health insurance. Whatever is left over goes into a fund for quarterly bonuses for Biwa’s cooks and dishwashers.

The charge is very transparent—an explanation appears on the menu and again on your bill—and so far diners have been incredibly enthusiastic about paying it. “People like it,” says general manager Ed Ross in this short video, noting that every night diners send back their bill with “awesome” and “this is great!” scribbled in the margins. “I think that people understand that it’s an issue,” says Ross.

Biwa covers every employee at the restaurant—from waiters to dishwashers—as long as they work 16.5 hours a week. The company pays 100 percent of the premium for the high-deductible plan. (If workers want a more comprehensive, lower deductible plan, they can get it, but have to chip in for the higher monthly premium.)

Rosen and Voelz have actually been paying their workers’ health insurance for a few years and they’ve offered one week of paid vacation per year to cooks and dishwashers since they opened in 2007. But the couple realized this summer—as premiums continued to soar—that they wouldn’t be able to do so for much longer unless they came up with a creative solution, fast.

They considered raising prices across the board. “But then we realized we could raise prices as a single line item and take this kind of boring business issue—that’s actually very important—and make the guests part of it,” says Rosen. The staff was initially concerned that the surcharge would mean stingier tips, but after a moment of head-scratching, according to Rosen, they bought into the idea. Rosen says that other than a handful of negative comments in online forums, customer feedback has been amazingly positive. “Tips have actually gone up!” he says.

At another Portland restaurant, a regional Mexican spot called Xico, the margaritas pay for health care. Or at least that’s what it says on the menu. Under the “Classic” Xico Margarita ($9)—made with Lunazul tequila, fresh lime juice, and triple sec—it reads: “Xico margaritas pay for full health care for our staff.”

But that’s not entirely accurate. Owner Liz Davis says she put this on the menu because the gross sales of margaritas matched what the company was already spending on health insurance. “We wanted to make it known that we were fully covering our employees,” says Davis.

Though employees have to work three months before they can get on Xico’s group plan, the company covers the entire monthly premium of $240 per month, no matter how few hours the employee works. It’s a fairly comprehensive plan from HMO Kaiser Permanente with $25 co-pays and low-cost prescriptions (generic drugs cost just $10). As with Biwa diners, Xico regulars seem more than happy to pitch in. “People get really excited about it and order more margaritas,” Davis says, laughing.

The average progressive Portlander may be happy to pay a little extra (or double down on their margaritas) to ensure restaurant workers get adequate medical care. But Saru Jayaraman, author of the exposé, “Behind the Kitchen Door,” doesn’t think consumers should be responsible for kitchen workers’ health insurance.

“Don’t get me wrong, I definitely applaud trying to provide health care and benefits,” says Jayaraman, who is the co-founder and director of the Restaurant Opportunities Centers United (ROC), an organization committed to improving the wages and working conditions of the nation’s 10 million restaurant workers. “But this is an industry-wide problem. Restaurants need to be providing benefits—it’s not the responsibility of the customer to do that.”

Then there’s the issue of trust. When the Healthy San Francisco law passed in 2008, requiring businesses there with 20 employees or more to offer health insurance, many restaurants added a surcharge to customers’ bills. Reactions were all over the map from supportive–“Too many of my friends and family are without health care”–to outrage that diners were being taxed, with San Francisco Chronicle restaurant critic Michael Bauer writing: “Incorporate all these expenses into menu prices.”

(A legal challenge against the program, which was filed by the Golden Gate Restaurant Association in 2006, was denied a hearing by the U.S. Supreme Court on June 29, 2010, legally clearing the program for continued existence for the foreseeable future.)

Then there’s the issue of oversight: In May, 19 restaurants were accused of not using that extra money exclusively for workers’ health insurance.

Jayaraman says plenty of restaurants manage to provide health insurance to their workers without passing the cost on to diners. “They’ve worked it into the efficiencies of the restaurant,” she says. “They say it actually reduces costs because it reduces turnover and increases productivity.”

Among the examples she gives are Zingerman’s Deli in Ann Arbor, Michigan, which offers subsidized health insurance for employees who work 30 hours a week (as long as they’ve been on staff for three months), “thrive-able” wages, paid time off, and matched 401(k) contributions.

Russell Street Deli in Detroit’s Eastern Market is another model employer. The deli offers living wages, health insurance, and an IRA program. ROC’s 2012 report Taking the High Road: a How-to Guide for Successful Restaurant Employers singles out a few other businesses that provide some form of health insurance for workers: Tom Colicchio’s Craft restaurant group in New York, Busboys & Poets in D.C., and Avalon International Breads in Detroit. “But many, many others provide health insurance; many provide full coverage, but the quality of the insurance varies,” notes Jayaraman.

Locavore fast food chain Burgerville—which has 39 restaurants in Washington and Oregon—has been offering workers comprehensive, affordable health care since 2006. To be eligible, employees must work 25 hours a week but once they do they only pay $30 a month. Health insurance kicks in after six months of employment.

“Chief cultural officer” Jack Graves attributes the low staff turnover at Burgerville—50 percent versus an industry average of over 100 percent—to this important benefit. “Offering health insurance got a lot of people insurance who had never had it before in their lives. It made people proud of where they’re working, proud that they can take care of their families in a manner that’s respectful,” he says.

Xico owner Liz Davis built the cost of health insurance into her business plan from the beginning, too, but she says the rising cost of health insurance—and the fact that she covers the full premium for even part-time employees after only three months on staff—means she may have to do something enterprising, like Biwa, to keep offering this benefit.

Lucky for her, Portland eaters are no longer satisfied with merely knowing the provenance of the chicken on the menu and whether it was humanely treated. They also want assurance that the restaurants they eat at treat their employees ethically—even if that means ordering another margarita.

- See more at: http://civileats.com/2013/12/03/health-on-the-menu-in-the-pacific-northwest/#sthash.t1P5XMYg.dpuf

14 March 2013

The organic food stamp challenge has been, well, a challenge lately. It's not that we've run out of money—yet. But because we went to Seattle for the weekend (a trip that was excluded from the challenge), we didn't have our usual two days of intensive food preparation. As a result, we have no granola, no bread, no waffles, no stock, and no black beans. On Monday morning, we woke to discover that we were not only out of eggs and milk, but honey, jam, and salad greens. Oh, right—we didn't go grocery shopping this weekend! Meals have been sorry affairs, cobbled together from leftovers in the fridge. On Monday, I grazed on apples, cheese, and leftover pasta (I was on a deadline so too busy to run to the store). For dinner, I roasted cauliflower (leftover from last week's cauliflower mac and cheese) with olive oil and garlic and heated up some already cooked salmon from last week. (Don worked late and ate leftovers at the office, I presume.) Tuesday night, because Safeway doesn't carry organic tortillas, I literally ate beans and rice. Some weeks, creating balanced home-cooked meals is harder than others.

But yesterday, I was inspired to do better after sitting in on a "Cooking Matters" class at the Oregon Food Bank. Part nutrition education and part hands-on cooking lessons, Cooking Matters is a 6-week-long class that teaches low-income folks how to cook healthy meals from scratch. The curriculum, which was developed by the the anti-hunger organization Share Our Strength, covers everything from knife safety to buying fruits and vegetables on a budget. Demand for the class, which is free, is high—in the Portland Metro area alone, the Oregon Food Bank runs about 50 classes a year. (In 2012, there were 73 classes in the state of Oregon.) Impressively, more than 30,000 people nationwide took either Cooking Matters classes or participated in a stand-alone "Store tour" last year. (Store tours teach people how to inspect labels, shop for whole grains, and calculate unit pricing.)

Once peeled, broccoli stems are great to eat

I wanted to observe a Cooking Matters class so I could better understand the challenges of living on food stamps (or any limited budget) while still getting healthy food on the table. As I've mentioned in previous posts, Don and I have an unfair advantage in that we both know our way around a kitchen, which makes sticking to a budget much easier. (We don't buy any processed foods except for the MorningStar vegetarian sausages Don likes so much—but he can't buy them until Lent is over because they're not organic.)

Merrill Maiano, the volunteer chef who teaches this particular class, started by announcing the menu: turkey meatloaf with quinoa and roasted veggies—broccoli, cauliflower, and butternut squash. (The mention of squash elicited an "ewww!" from one opinionated student.) Ignoring the outburst, Merrill explained that turkey, unlike beef or veal, is a lean source of protein and that quinoa is both healthier and more flavorful than rice. (Note: quinoa is actually a seed, not a grain. It comes from a plant that's related to spinach and chard and it contains all nine amino acids, making it one of the most protein-rich vegetarian foods on the planet.) One of the cool things about Cooking Matters is that at the end of each class, students are sent home with several ingredients from the day's meal—incentive to recreate it at home. This day, each student went home with turkey, onions, carrots, celery, and a baggie of quinoa.

The 12 students—a diverse group of women and men (one of whom was deaf)—trooped into the kitchen, washed their hands, and dove right in. This was their graduation class, so I shouldn't have been surprised to see such excellent knife skills in action: lots of deft chopping of garlic, onion, celery and carrots. Half the class made a mirepoixfor the meatloaf while the other half started chopping the veggies. Merrill showed us a trick for splitting open the squash. Using a small frying pan like a hammer, she hit the back of the chef's knife, wedging it deeper into the squash. (It's a safer technique than using your hand to push the blade, because the squash is so tough.)

Merrill uses a pan to wedge the knife deeper

As Merrill expertly peeled and chopped broccoli stems into bite-sized pieces (to roast with the florets), I asked her if she ever taught students how to make vegetable stock. (One frugal way to do this is to save peelings from veggies in the fridge or freezer until you have enough to make stock.)

"I've had people in this class who don't know the difference between broccoli and asparagus," she told me, by way of an answer. "And who have never baked before in their lives." The upshot: When you're starting with such a limited knowledge base, it's best to stick to the syllabus. (Though of course, if a student asks her how to make stock, Merrill will happily tell him how it's done.) Merrill reminded me of another hurdle many of her students face: insufficient equipment. One man in this class doesn't have an oven at home, only an electric skillet. You can't very well recreate carrot-pineapple muffins at home if you don't have an oven. At the beginning of the six weeks, though, many of Merrill's students are consuming a diet of mostly processed, packaged foods, but by the end they know how to make stir fry, bean soup, grain-based salads, meatloaf, and muffins. This is progress, indeed!

Back in the class, the students were sautéing the mirepoix on the stovetop, filling the kitchen with the lovely sweet scent of browning onions. Meanwhile, their classmates began preparing the turkey meatloaf, whisking a dressing of egg, Dijon, herbs, hot sauce, and parmesan cheese together with breadcrumbs.

Heat oven to 350 degrees. Line the baking dish with foil and lightly grease it with cooking spray.

Heat the oil in a large sauté pan or skillet over medium heat. Add the onion, carrot and celery and cook until the onions soften and begin to become translucent.

Add the garlic and sauté for 30 seconds, until fragrant. Transfer the entire mixture to a bowl to cool.

In another large bowl, whisk the egg, water, herbs, Dijon, Worcestershire sauce, hot sauce, salt, and pepper, and parmesan cheese together until completely combined.

Whisk in the breadcrumbs until just evenly distributed. Then, stir in the cooled onion mixture.

Add the ground turkey and cooked grains until the mixture is uniform.

Press the meat into a ball and transfer it to the baking dish. Once in the dish, shape the meat into a rectangular 2-inch thick loaf. There should be about an inch or so of space between the loaf and the sides of your baking dish. Spray the loaf lightly with cooking spray or brush with a little oil.

Bake the loaf for approximately 45 minutes, or until the center of the loaf reads 160 degrees on a meat thermometer. If you don’t have a thermometer, cut into the loaf to confirm that it is opaque and no longer pink in the middle.

When the loaf is done, remove it from the oven and let it rest for 10-15 minutes before serving. Slice into 1-inch thick pieces and serve.

As the meatloaf cooked and the veggies roasted, I chatted with a few students about their favorite parts of the class. One man told me he made a garbanzo bean soup at home and his cousin and her son, who had never tasted garbanzo beans before, weren't quite sure what to make of them. "It was something new," he said, which was "pretty cool." A blonde woman in her '50s said she loved discovering new foods in this class—like pea pods (in a veggie stir fry) and the carrot-pineapple muffins, which were also a hit at home. Yet another woman said this class has taught her a lot about "seasoning, how to cut things, what to put in your pantry, and how to improvise without a recipe."

Turkey quinoa meatloaf & roasted vegetables—yum!

At last, it was time to eat. I was invited to stay and taste the fruits of their labors, which I gladly did. As we helped ourselves to the food, one student was applauded for making vegetables half of his plate, following the USDA's "MyPlate" guidelines. (I got the sense that six weeks ago, he was eating more meat than veggies.) The meatloaf was moist and flavorful--with a nice crunch and nuttiness because of the quinoa. The vegetables, which had been tossed with olive oil and some spices and roasted in the oven for about 20 minutes, were a little caramelized and simply delicious.

Before I left, I asked assistant chef Stacy Flaherty whether the issue of organic produce ever arises. It turns out it does. "The people we get in these classes—they know organic food is out there and they know it can be expensive," Flaherty says. Though the instructors are careful not to tell students what they should or shouldn't buy, they may mention which fruits and vegetables are safer to eat conventionally. (Those with thicker skins or rinds like avocado, watermelon, or grapefruit.)

Erin Carver, the Americorps Member who works in the Food Bank's nutrition education program, reminded students that farmers' markets will be opening soon, and that all of the Portland Farmers Markets accept food stamps. A few of these, she noted, even have matching programs—free money, in effect, for you to spend on fresh fruits & vegetables.

More soon on "Beyond Organic" foods and how we weather the final two weeks of the Food Stamp Challenge.

30 January 2013

New York Times columnist Roger Cohen says that organic food is elitist and assumes that the only people who demand healthy, pesticide-free food are well-off Whole Foods shoppers. I don't know how else to say this: he's wrong.

Times columnist Roger Cohen says that organic food is elitist, and assumes that the only people who demand healthy, pesticide-free food are well-off Whole Foods shoppers. Well, I don’t know how else to put it: he’s wrong. - See more at: http://civileats.com/2013/01/30/eradicating-food-deserts-one-congregation-at-a-time/#sthash.eHS6ryhr

Times columnist Roger Cohen says that organic food is elitist, and assumes that the only people who demand healthy, pesticide-free food are well-off Whole Foods shoppers. Well, I don’t know how else to put it: he’s wrong. - See more at: http://civileats.com/2013/01/30/eradicating-food-deserts-one-congregation-at-a-time/#sthash.eHS6ryhr.blog on why Roger Cohen gets it wrong. How Ecumenical Ministres of Oregon makes sure that organic food is anything but elitist, for Civil Eats.

19 December 2011

When he was seven years old, Malik Yakini, inspired by his grandfather, planted his own backyard garden in Detroit, seeding it with carrots and other vegetables. Should it come as any surprise that today, Yakini has made urban farming his vocation? The Executive director of the Detroit Black Community Food Security Network (DBCFSN), which he co-founded in 2006, he is also chair of the Detroit Food Policy Council, which advocates for a sustainable, localized food system and a food-secure Detroit.

It’s well known that Detroit has been hard hit by the economic crisis—its unemployment rate is a staggering 28%—but it also has one of the most well-developed urban agriculture scenes in the country. Over the past decade, resourceful Detroiters and organizations such as DBCFSN have been converting the city’s vacant lots and fallow land into lush farms and community gardens. According to the Greening of Detroit, there are now over 1,351 gardens in the city.

I spoke to Yakini, one of the leaders of Detroit’s vibrant food justice movement, about the problem with the term “food desert,” how Detroit vegans survive the winter, and what the DBCFSN is doing to change the food landscape in Detroit. “We’re really making an effort to reach beyond the foodies—to get to the common folk who are not really involved in food system reform,” says Yakini. Continue reading my interview on Civil Eats.

26 October 2011

When you hear the words Slow Food, do you conjure up a multi-course locavore dinner with wine pairings? If so, think again. Over the past three years, Slow Food USA president Josh Viertel has hammered home the mission of Slow Food: it's about advocating for food that is good (healthy), clean (i.e. no pesticides), and fair (farmers and workers get paid a living wage). As Viertel makes it clear in this interview I did with him for Civil Eats, Slow Food is at heart a social justice organization that's rallying members to be politically engaged, whether that's by taking up the $5 challenge or pressuring Congress for changes to the 2012 Food and Farm Bill. Taking pleasure in food—and in cooking—will always be inextricably linked to the organization's larger goal of ensuring that, "Everyone can eat food that is good for them, good for the environment and good for the people who grow and pick it." For inspiration, here's a video of a group of farmers who took the $5 challenge.

When Josh Viertel took the helm at Slow Food USA in 2008, the organization had a reputation—at least in this country—as a club for foodies. Under Viertel’s leadership, though, the organization has dispelled this image with an increasing focus on food justice issues such as improving the abysmal quality of cafeteria food and fighting “ag-gag” bills that would’ve made it illegal to take photos or videos of farms. Last month, Slow Food organized its members to “take back the happy meal” by showing that it’s possible to cook a nutritious meal for less than $5 a person. Over 30,000 people came together at over 5,500 events to participate in Slow Food’s $5 challenge.

When I spoke to Viertel a few weeks ago, he had just returned from a board meeting in Portland, Oregon, and was full of praise for both Andy Ricker’s Thai restaurant Pok-Pok and Portland’s energetic food justice scene. As I talked to him, I came to the happy realization that Slow Food is a flourishing network of people from all backgrounds and socioeconomic levels—from advocates of Native American fishing methods to radical kimchee makers in Indianapolis. All these members are coming together to overthrow the industrial food system and buy and make food that is good, clean, and fair.

- See more at: http://civileats.com/2011/10/26/on-food-justice-an-interview-with-slow-foods-josh-viertel/#sthash.dxbwA5Oo.dpuf

When Josh Viertel took the helm at Slow Food USA in 2008, the organization had a reputation—at least in this country—as a club for foodies. Under Viertel’s leadership, though, the organization has dispelled this image with an increasing focus on food justice issues such as improving the abysmal quality of cafeteria food and fighting “ag-gag” bills that would’ve made it illegal to take photos or videos of farms. Last month, Slow Food organized its members to “take back the happy meal” by showing that it’s possible to cook a nutritious meal for less than $5 a person. Over 30,000 people came together at over 5,500 events to participate in Slow Food’s $5 challenge.

When I spoke to Viertel a few weeks ago, he had just returned from a board meeting in Portland, Oregon, and was full of praise for both Andy Ricker’s Thai restaurant Pok-Pok and Portland’s energetic food justice scene. As I talked to him, I came to the happy realization that Slow Food is a flourishing network of people from all backgrounds and socioeconomic levels—from advocates of Native American fishing methods to radical kimchee makers in Indianapolis. All these members are coming together to overthrow the industrial food system and buy and make food that is good, clean, and fair.

- See more at: http://civileats.com/2011/10/26/on-food-justice-an-interview-with-slow-foods-josh-viertel/#sthash.dxbwA5Oo.dpuf